Re: Mission Posted on March 11, 2010 by Dodie Bellamy
In January, at the opening of the Anniversary Show at SFMOMA, artist Colter Jacobsen and I found ourselves standing in the doorway of the SECA/Mission School room, which was kind of comical since Colter himself is frequently associated with the Mission School. Well, maybe not “comical.” Maybe “awkward” or “ironic” would be better. I pointed to the signage and said, “I guess the Mission School is official.” Colter nodded toward the Barry McGee assemblage bulging from the wall and said, “Yes, it’s pregnant and giving birth to itself.”
Barry McGee, Untitled, 1996
A few weeks later, when I return to take a better look at the works of Leslie Shows, Simon Evans, Barry McGee, etc., my feelings are mixed. It’s great that the museum is supporting younger local artists, but does this art with its found materials (a.k.a. garbage), skateboard images and graffiti, want to be there, all gussied up and crowning the walls of gallery 204B? I remember openings for these artists at Jack Hanley’s gallery on Valencia, Adobe Books on 16th Street, and Rick Jacobsen’s short-lived Kiki Gallery (1993-95) on 14th Street—musician friends or the artists themselves tormenting electric guitars, art lovers spilling out onto the sidewalk, swilling canned beer, smoking and talking a mile a minute, the crowd so dense that passersby had to walk in the street to get around them, neighbors calling the police. I remember the wooden fort-type structure Chris Johanson filled Jack Hanley’s with, how we had to climb on it and bend our bodies and peek through crevices to view the pictures he’d affixed to it. I remember the stench of cat urine at Adobe, the dust, the labyrinth of scenesters sipping red wine from plastic glasses amidst book-laden tables that prevented anyone but the most devoted from making it to the tiny back room to view the art. I remember the art serving as a backdrop to plays, poetry readings, and acoustical music sets—and Jerome Caja taking a bubble bath in a claw-footed tub during his opening at Kiki. I turn around and around in gallery 204B and no matter how hard I try, I can’t feel the aura of those raucous nights clinging to this work. This art, I think, has lost the battle. It is now one with the impenetrable cleanliness of the institution.
Chris Johanson, Untitled (Figures with black presence), 2002
