Walter and McBean Galleries Jill Magid: The Proposal September 8–December 10, 2016 | Walter and McBean Galleries
At SFAI, Ziegler’s work served as the catalyst for A Living Thing, which created space for common ground within our increasingly fractured civil discourse. Throughout its run, A Living Thing offered a sanctuary for conversations, performances, debate, and acts of solidarity and resistance—through an open mic during all gallery hours, and an open call to students, artists, activists, citizens, residents, visitors, and others to contribute to the life represented by the flag.
The Proposal presents a climactic moment within Jill Magid’s extended, multimedia artwork, The Barragán Archives, which examines the legacy of Mexican architect and Pritzker Prizewinner Luis Barragán (1902–1988). The multi-year project poses piercing, radical, and pragmatic questions about the forms of power, public access, and copyright that construct artistic legacy. With this work, Magid asks, “What happens to an artist’s legacy when it is owned by a corporation and subject to a country’s laws where none of his architecture exists? Who can access it? Who can’t?”
Flag Exchange offers a powerful reminder that artists do new and vital things for our public life, even when nothing else works. Art finds the common ground that we’ve otherwise lost. A Living Thing is organized by Hesse McGraw, SFAI Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs; and Katie Hood Morgan, SFAI Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager.
In 1995, Barragán’s professional archive, including the rights to his name and work and all photographs taken of it, was purchased by the Chairman of the Swiss furniture company Vitra, allegedly as a gift for his fiancé, Federica Zanco; who now serves as Director of the Barragan Foundation. For the last twenty years, however, the archive has been publicly inaccessible, housed in a bunker at Vitra corporate headquarters. The Proposal reaches a thrilling and unexpected salvo in Magid’s engagement with Barragán, Zanco, Barragán’s descendants, the Mexican Government, and the indispensable creative legacy that binds them. Through the public exhibition of The Proposal, Magid presented Zanco with the gift of a two-carat diamond engagement ring grown from the cremated remains of Barragán’s body, in exchange for the gift of his archive to Mexico. The Proposal has not only exhumed Barragán’s physical remains, but opened the possibility to bring his spiritual and artistic legacy up out of the vault and back to life. The Proposal is commissioned by San Francisco Art Institute. The exhibition is curated by Hesse McGraw, SFAI Vice President for Exhibitions and Public Programs, and organized with Katie Hood Morgan, Assistant Curator and Exhibitions Manager. A Living Thing Mel Ziegler: Flag Exchange January 19–April 1, 2017 | Emanuel Walter Gallery The American flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. In an act of sly and generous alchemy, artist Mel Ziegler journeyed through all 50 United States between 2011 and 2016 and exchanged distressed American flags flying at civic and private locations—city halls, post offices, hospitals, homes, and schools—for new flags. The 50 decayed flags form a work, Flag Exchange, that spans the geography of our union, and represents the spectrum of our allegiance.
Installation view of Jill Magid’s The Proposal September 8–December 10, 2016 Walter and McBean Galleries Photo by Marco David Installation view of A Living Thing: Mel Ziegler, Flag Exchange January 19–April 1, 2017 Emanuel Walter Gallery Photo by Marco David
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