Art Market San Francisco | 2023
Art Market San Francisco, the Bay Area’s longest running art fair, returned to Fort Mason last week with 85 top galleries from around the world and a program of Public Projects curated by AMP’s Creative Director, Nato Thompson. We were fortunate to preview the first look at this year’s show on Thursday, and were inspired by a range of contemporary artists and mediums. As an interior designer, one of the reasons I love Art Market San Francisco is the variety of artists represented – from emerging to mid-career. This also means that the price points run the gamut, which works well for both beginner and established art collectors. We can typically find at least one piece of art for clients homes, and are always exposed to new, up and coming talents and galleries.
Vinça Monadé is an art teacher in ceramics at the “Gué à Tresmes” school, in France. In addition to her teaching, she also works on personal art projects. She began her apprenticeship by studying graphic design and then studied at Amore’s studio at the Beaux-Arts university in Paris. She completed her studies with a degree in Art History and developed a passion for the art of the Middle Ages and the Italian Primitives. Vinça Monadé then became interested in silkscreen printing and worked at Jérôme Arcay’s Parisian studio. In her more recent experiments, “Couleurs des champs”, Vinça turns to the fragment, forms anchored in her imagination and her environment. Once again, she is inspired by nature and the fields that surround her on a daily basis, that she observes throughout the seasons.
Born in 1976 in Tokyo, Aiko Tezuka graduated from Musashino Art University with an MA and the Kyoto City University of Arts with a PhD in oil painting. Since 1997, she has produced artworks that unravel woven fabric. Tezuka re-purposes vintage and antique fabrics by extracting several wefts or warps; the fabrics lose their original form and color, the former patterns are destroyed. But the process of deconstruction is always an act of reconstruction: new forms and ornaments evolve, hidden layers inside the fabric are revealed almost surgically. Represented by Maybaum Gallery in San Francisco.
Milly Ristvedt was born in Kimberley, B.C. and studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University). She began her art practice in Toronto and had her first exhibition there in 1968 with the Carmen Lamanna Gallery. Her work was included in the 7th Biennial of Canadian Painting at the National Gallery of Canada and the 3rd International Pioneer Galleries Exhibition at Musee Cantonal, Lausanne and Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris during this period. Since 1968 Ristvedt has had more than fifty solo exhibitions, including a travelling ten-year survey exhibition in 1978 organized by the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and her work has been included in national and international exhibitions.
Elise Ferguson ( b.1964 Richmond, VA) earned her MFA from The University of Illinois, Chicago in 1995, and her BFA from The School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1988. Her work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Romer Young Gallery, 57W57 Arts, Halsey Mckay, and Barton College Art Galleries, amongst others.
Elise Ferguson’s work is about the flexible nature of perception. Using pattern and color, along with a range of process-driven approaches, the artist creates works based on mathematical puzzles and geometric variation. Ferguson uses what would typically be described as sculptors’ materials: plaster on mdf panels and paper. The plaster is pigmented and troweled on, layer upon layer, to nearly sculptural levels. Inspired by Brutalism’s uncamouflaged use of cement – with seams showing and the irregularities embraced – these works embody their inherent materiality and have a distinct object-like quality. Represented at Romer Young Gallery in San Francisco.
Interested in learning more about the local art scene in San Francisco?
Take a look at our previous post on collecting art in the Bay Area.