People love Fog Design + Art, one of San Francisco’s biggest art fairs, for a lot of reasons: the quality of the galleries, the work, the scale—which is more intimate than sprawling fairs such as Art Basel Miami—and the location, spread over two piers at Mason.
“I mean, we’re not under a tent in South Beach,” says Mariah Nelson, the founder of the gallery and research center Blunk Space, but she still appreciates the light in the exhibition hall and the view of Alcatraz and the bay.
Blunk Space's booth at 'Fog' includes salvaged wood furniture by @riokobayashi_d(Courtesy of @jbblunkestate)
Nelson, a visitor to Fog for years, likes that the fair is not just art or design, but both. This year, she wanted to introduce what they do to more people.
“We're in Point Reyes Station, so we're a destination gallery, and although we are fairly well known in the Bay Area, we thought this would be an interesting opportunity to test the waters,” she said at the preview gala on Wednesday night, a benefit for SFMOMA’s education programs. “We were excited about the visibility the fair would offer us as a gallery that's situated outside of the city.”
This year more than 60 exhibitors are at the fair, which runs through January 25th. Blunk Space is one of 19 to appear for the first time. Along with galleries from places like Tokyo, Mexico City, São Paolo, and Glasgow, 16 come from the Bay Area, including some reliable showstoppers.
Anthony Meier’s booth is displaying Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s Supergraphics, along with new works by gallery artists like Saif Azzuz and Libby Black. The theme of Jessica Silverman’s presentation is Out of the Blue, and the artists, including Sadie Barnett (who recently won a Creative Capital award), David Huffman, and Beverly Fishman, made work that bathed her booth in that color. Catherine Clark Gallery’s In Between Spaces shows pieces by Arlene Correa Valencia (whose work was recently acquired by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), Alejandro Cartagena, and Lehuauakea.
Jessica Silverman Gallery is presenting 'Out of the Blue' at this year's 'Fog'(Courtesy of @jessicasilvermangallery)
Fog Design + Art is part of what is now officially SF Art Week, which includes numerous events around the Bay Area held during the third week of January. One of the shows named a must-see for the week by Cultured Magazine is I Dreamt of This and There Will be More by Guanyu Xu at re.riddle, a gallery at San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project. At their Fog debut, re.riddle has a solo presentation of the Mongolian artist based in Paris, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Where the Infinite Leans Intimacy, at Pier 2, an area generally reserved for smaller galleries with emerging artists.
Candace Huey, director of re.riddle, says she chose Davaadorj for the prestigious art fair because of her visual presence and conceptual rigor.
“I think in this current moment when we are kind of feeling so disassociated, so displaced and disembodied, her work is very embodied,” Huey says. “It's dealing with sensualness. It's dealing with a kind of life force, and it reminds us of what it's like to feel aliveness through the sun and through our bodies.”
It’s the third year at Fog for Kimberly Johansson, the director of Johansson Projects, who praised the fair’s curation and appreciates the short trip over from Oakland. The two artists in her booth both work with different styles of textiles. One, Susie Taylor, is a master loom weaver who invented a form of weaving with pleats called Origami. The other artist is Miguel Arzabe, who paints acrylic on canvas.
'Isla del Lago' by MiguelArzabe, woven acrylic on canvas, 2025 is on display at the Johansson Projects booth(Shaun Roberts)
“He cuts them into strips, and he weaves one into the other using Andean weaving patterns over the top of these modernist renditions that he's painted,” Johansson says. “He doesn't plan it out either. It comes to him as he's weaving, so it's kind of mind-boggling.”
Morgann Trumbull, the director of Morgann Trumbull Projects in San Jose, previously participated in Fog when working with the Berggruen Gallery. She likes the interactive nature of Fog Focus and, like Nelson, appreciates that the fair has both design and art—something she considered when choosing two artists to show.
“Nathan Lynch, a ceramicist, deals with these ideas of form and function a lot, and he’s playing with utility and interaction, so it felt like a really good fit for Fog,” she says. “And Rebekah [Goldstein]’s paintings are just so delightful. Their shapes are stunning and a wonderful counterpoint to Nathan's work.”
Olivia Gauthier, the director of Los Angeles gallery Vielmetter, another new exhibitor at Fog, has a long relationship with curators and collectors in the Bay Area. Her booth presents two textile artists originally from the Bahamas, Gio Swaby and April Bey, the latter of whom was part of a group show earlier this year at Jonathan Carver Moore in SF.
One of the pieces on display at Gallery Fumi's booth at 'Fog'(Courtesy of @fogfair)
“We wanted to kind of do something that was really a big statement,” Gauthier says. “April in particular really loves to do bright, beautiful, bold installations. Both artists collaborated with us on the entire design of the booth and the wall colors. We wanted to really make a splash at Fog.”
Just a few hours into the fair, Gauthier was already having an incredible time.
“We're finding that everyone is incredibly easy to work with, super hospitable, and we love the size of the fair and the quality of it,” she told 7x7 at the preview. “It's great to see so many of our colleagues that we see at other fairs, but in a less overwhelming environment, and we're getting a lot more time to talk to people so far, which has been wonderful.”
// ‘Fog Design + Art’ is on view 11am to 7pm Thursday, January 22nd through Saturday, January 24th, and 11am to 5pm on Sunday, January 25th at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Piers 2 and 3 (Marina), fogfair.com
April Bey's 'And...I Would Never Ask You What You Think Because I've Seen That You Don't' is one of the works on display at Vielmetter(Jeff McLane, courtesy of @vielmetter)
