/Galleries
Sophie Calle
Feb 27 - Apr 12, 2025
Tuesday–Friday, 10:30am–5:30pm Saturday, 11am–5pm
415-981-2661
Event WebsiteAbout
Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition by Sophie Calle. Making its U.S. debut will be selections from Unfinished, a series focused on projects that Calle had previously begun and abandoned. The series collects photographs, handwritten notes, video excerpts, comic books, and other documents, pairing these materials with Calle’s short text describing the artwork she had originally imagined and how it came to (not) be. The exhibition will also feature a selection of photographs Calle made at the Musée National Picasso in Paris during the pandemic, depicting paintings from the museum’s collection hidden by protective sheets or coverings. The series was included in Calle’s 2023 solo exhibition at Musée National Picasso, À toi de faire, ma mignonne, and will be shown for the first time in the U.S.
Image: Sophie Calle
Cale Mona Lisa (Wrong turn), 2023 (detail)
© 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
SF/Arts Curator Insight
The methods French conceptual artist Sophie Calle deploys to create her work are much more interesting than the images and objects that end up on display, which is what makes them vital: we require the proof to contemplate the process. Over the last five decades she has probed our growing obsessions (surveillance, the cult of personality, the blurring of truth and fiction) by setting up elaborate projects that fall through gaps in contemporary modes of thought and behavior. With trademark wit, Calle reveals the limits of her own artistic practice, putting her failures on display in this exhibition and explaining what went wrong.
Mark Taylor
SF/Arts Curator
Fraenkel Gallery
Since 1979, Fraenkel Gallery has presented more than 350 exhibitions exploring photography and its relation to other media, expanding the conversation around photography and contemporary art.
Since 1979, Fraenkel Gallery has presented more than 350 exhibitions exploring photography and its relation to other media, expanding the conversation around photography and contemporary art.