Future tense
Politics' and art's intersections become surreal.

By Glen Helfand

THE FALL ART event with the most surrealistic edges won't be found in any gallery or museum. It's the state of California that will function as an exhibit for cultural activity. Whatever unfolds before and after the October recall election (Oct. 7) is, sadly, California's grandest contribution to world culture, if not the medium of reality television this season. As usual, California's ahead of the creative curve, only this time it's in charting a downslide. The election is tinged with theater, media spectacle, and performance art. It will generate huge political and economic repercussions, as well as rich fodder for news analysts, sociologists, and yes, artists.

In such a scenario, art cannot help imitating the bizarreness of real life. There's a sense of foreboding in the air, and artists are as confounded as everyone else. Visual arts programs in the Bay Area are scaling back, favoring earnest tones and a focus on this region. The shift is pragmatic: California arts funding is evaporating faster than our civil rights, and it becomes more difficult to argue for arts money when social programs are endangered. Most art spaces in town report that grants are harder than ever to come by, though they'll keep plugging away with smaller staffs and leaner resources, applying creative – and not so creative – approaches to financial woes.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's summer Chagall show was mounted to pull in crowds willing to shell out an extra five bucks for colorful paintings that are uncharacteristically historic for the institution. It's been heartening to see long lines that might ultimately support less populist programming. The museum's big fall show, for example, is 'Diane Arbus: Revelations' (Oct. 25-Feb. 8, 2004), a retrospective of the late photographer's dour – some say mean-spirited – work. Arbus's images of freaks and losers resonate in a repressive era; we all feel the walls closing in, the way they do on that lumbering Jewish giant she famously photographed. Her work hasn't been seen in a major way in 30 years, which means the exhibition has automatic critical cachet. The black-and-white pictures, however, aren't exactly glowing with optimism. Imagine if SFMOMA staged a rave for this show, the way it used to during the ebullient dot-com days of Keith Haring and Sol LeWitt exhibitions. E-commerce E casualties would have to be carted off in ambulances.

Still, San Francisco's status as a bastion of alternative art spaces endures. In October, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be a decade old, while that same month the Lab turns 20. The former will mount 'Ten by Twenty' (Oct. 18-Jan. 4, 2004), an exhibition of collaborative works by artists with a history at the grand yet formative institution and others new to it: Manuel Ocampo and Chris Oliveria, Alicia McCarthy and Ruby Neri, to name a couple pairs. The Lab's anniversary show (which I'm organizing) is an attempt to shed light on the stalwart nonprofit's sometimes invisible history. Gallery 16, which funds an artist-in-residence program with a digital print facility, also celebrates its 10th birthday this season. None of these spaces is ready to give up the fight.

One of the more intriguing fall projects, titled '17 Reasons' (Nov. 9-Dec. 14; www.jackhanley.com), sidesteps the above models by taking art to the streets of the Mission District. Named after the poetically elusive sign that used to be on top of Thrift Town, the exhibition offers local and internationally known artists – including John Baldessari, Anne Collier, Harrell Fletcher, Chris Johanson, Aleksandra Mir, and Erwin Wurm – a chance to create new works that will be presented on street corners and in store windows. Inspired by the European model of community-wide art events, the organizers (gallery owner Jack Hanley and curator Kate Fowle) wanted to break out of the gallery context to concentrate on the local environment. They're also breaking free of the corporate support model, going grassroots and funding the exhibition out of their own pockets.

Reflecting the Bay Area's Pacific Rim connections, Asian art will be prominent this fall. San Francisco Art Institute professor Reagan Louie's potentially controversial SFMOMA exhibition 'Sex Work in Asia' (Sept. 4-Dec. 7) features William Vollman-esque color portraits of working women from numerous countries; to steer viewers in a more art historical direction, works by other artists with similar themes will contextualize the photos. (Louie will also show his work at Rena Bransten Gallery.) The Asian Art Museum inaugurates a contemporary program in its new building with 'Leaning Forward, Looking Back: Eight Contemporary Korean Artists' (Oct. 18-Jan. 11, 2004).

Similarly, a group of Indonesian artists who work in comic book and street vernaculars will make an appearance at Intersection for the Arts and on public walls. The collective, Apotik Komik, is taking part in 'Sama Sama (You're Welcome)' (Sept. 10-Oct. 25), a collaborative exchange show put together by San Francisco artists who have worked with the Clarion Alley Mural Project. Somehow it's not surprising that the Indonesian artists are facing difficult visa negotiations while the supporting arts organizations are learning quick, deep lessons in immigration law. Everyone is moving forward optimistically, but this is yet another instance in which art and politics poignantly intersect.

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