SF/Arts Curator Insight

During the height of the mid-20th-century's Abstract Expressionist movement, which exercised outsized influence on U.S. painters, a handful of (soon to be famous) Bay Area Figurative artists (Bischoff, Brown, Park, and Oliveira, among them) rebelled, returning to representation with a new sense of urgency inspired by and in reaction to the period's dominant style. The gallery's top two floors feature rarely exhibited pieces on loan from private collectors. One imagines the work in "Barry McGee's Contemporary Arts Center," a concurrent group show curated by the artist in the basement, will have much to say in response to the old dogs populating the walls above.