March 18 2003

By Glen Helfand

MATTHEW BARNEY RECENTLY took over the entire Guggenheim in New York with his sculptures and five lavish, obliquely monumental Cremaster films. He's only 35, a fact that gives young artists cause to question their station. What exactly constitutes a success when someone like Barney, who operates on a grand, well-funded scale (his last film cost a few million), is the top? Maybe the '80s are back. The issue has always been more problematic here in the Bay Area, where conservative market forces don't quite foster epic success stories. Besides, who isn't revising his or her career strategies for tough times?

So it's fitting that there's a low-key anticipation for the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Art Award exhibition, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's only showcase specifically geared to supporting emerging Bay Area artists working with more modest means. The show, opening this week, is organized every two years by In/Site, an SFMOMA auxiliary group. It's a big deal to local artists who receive some recognition from the city's most prestigious contemporary art venue, an exhibition, a catalog, and a little bit of financial support – this year, a $1,500 honorarium for each of the four included artists. But perhaps the biggest lure of the prize is that thousands of people, including the artists' families, neighbors, childhood friends, and visiting curators and collectors who pass through SFMOMA, will be introduced to their artwork. Something could happen careerwise.

This year's recipients – John Bankston, Andrea Higgins, Chris Johanson, and Will Rogan – are a stylistically and thematically diverse group who, if nothing else, suggest the Bay Area is home to a range of well-articulated visions. Bankston makes narrative illustrative paintings and drawings that seem like the randy bastard children of Brer Rabbit books and adult comics, with novel uses of the cultural-studies staple themes of race and sexuality. Higgins uses the garments of first ladies as the socialized subjects of her dazzling yet demure oil paintings, geometric abstractions resembling hefty magnifications of fabric swatches – don't miss her dizzying crimson Nancy composed of thousands of sharp dollops of red paint.

In contrast, Rogan makes offhand, snapshot-like photographs and videotapes of ordinary little things and quietly amusing, accidental juxtapositions he sees on the streets or in his house. His is currently a pervasive San Francisco aesthetic informed by the sometimes wacky celebrations of the commonplace practiced by Bay Area conceptualists of the 1970s. Johanson, the most widely exhibited of the four, makes energetic painting installations, rendered in distinctively cartoonish words and pictures on recycled wood, that deal with the precarious positions of humanity in a world ruled by uncaring corporations and despots.

Awards, however, are always problematic: how do you anoint just four artists with a "best of" status without raising questions? Some viewers might quibble with the selections, but one can hardly fault the artists, who are notably unpretentious, even sweet. "I'm a bit overwhelmed by the award," Bankston, 40, says. "I never would have thought my work would be in SFMOMA." He states this sincerely, even though his work scored well in "Freestyle," a nationally noted 2001 show of recent art by African Americans at New York's Studio Museum in Harlem, a showcase that netted him New York gallery representation and European exhibitions.

Johanson, who at 34 finds his career on an upswing – dealers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York; participation in the Whitney Biennial; a solo show at high-profile Deitch Projects; and a gig at the Basel Art Fair this June – concurs. "I'm blown away. I never thought I'd show here," he says while taking a break from building a densely filled new installation with environmentalist messages. "This is probably the only time I'm gonna have a show at this museum; it's in my hometown, and I want it to be interesting for people.

"My trip and the contemporary taste buds just seemed to have lined up. I just happened to be lucky enough to move here in '89 and live in the right neighborhood," he says, meaning the Mission District, the section of San Francisco with which he's identified (even though he recently moved to Berkeley). "There are a lot of local artists who are working hard; it's really pretty random who gets an award like this."

"I've always heard a lot of people saying [the award] is all about connections," Higgins, who is 30, admits. "I don't feel like I have great connections. People are catty about it because it's a small art scene." Some might note that she shows at Todd Hosfelt Gallery, where, after a couple of exhibitions, her labor-intensive work sells as fast as she makes it.

Will Rogan, the youngest artist in the group, at 27, seems a bit overwhelmed in ways that reflect the intentional modesty of his work. "I'm still in a weird place where I feel insecure about it," he admits. "It's an odd experience to look at the Gursky show, which is extremely slick and composed, and then to walk downstairs and see my picture of a golf ball lodged in a storm drain." He might have to get used to it. Jack Hanley, who is Rogan's and Johanson's dealer, has been hawking their wares and talking up the SFMOMA show at international art fairs.

The show doesn't aim to be a picture of the region, like "Bay Area Now," at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but the four award-winners do reflect diverse elements of the Bay Area arts scene. As in years past, the SECA artists were selected by a process that, for the most part, has been followed since the award was first given, in the early 1960s. Local arts professionals are asked to nominate worthy artists. Out of the 200 resulting applications last year, 30 artists were selected to be visited by In/Site members – a cadre of nearly 100 midlevel art collectors or just plain art lovers – about 50 of whom take tour buses to the studios where the art gets made. Some artists have found this aspect of the process dubious. Imagine the comedic culture clash: air-conditioned tour buses of art lovers pull up to funky Hunters Point artist enclaves, and you see the social inequity that's a ubiquitous part of the art market. In years past, when the selections were made by In/Site members, artists have complained about the insensitivity of such interactions, so this year the final selections were made by SFMOMA curators Janet Bishop and Clara Kim after taking into consideration the comments of the group.

"It was a wonderful opportunity to look at the larger picture," Kim says. "What we saw was incredibly diverse. At the end of the day, it was choosing four of the strongest artists."

"In my view the process has improved a great deal," says dealer Rena Bransten, who represents Bankston. "In the old days it was too much too soon. Now the artists seem a bit more seasoned, and the award fits better with others nationally."

For a museum that primarily concentrates on international artists of known stature, the show is an opportunity to work closely with young artists who may not have had a solo showcase at this level. The artists, in turn, get to experience a top-tier exhibition setting and all that entails. Bankston, for one, registers surprise at the elaborateness of museum protocol. "The shipping people came by to pick up my work today with these amazingly constructed crates," he says. "I was just going to put the paintings on the top of my car and drive them over."

Higgins had a similar response. When a painting she'd just completed for the show still had an extraneous piece of masking tape stuck to it, the museum conservators required signatures and layers of bureaucratic approval to remove it. "I'm sure I seemed like a wide-eyed kid from Kansas," she says with a laugh.