San Francisco Art Institute TOWER + ONLINE
THREE TURNS
January 22, 23 and 24, 2021
CuratorS Kathy Brew, Raheleh "Minoosh" Zomorodinia, Christopher Coppola
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and SF Artists Alumni (SFAA) proudly present Three Turns, a juried exhibition of video works by SFAI alumni artists. Featuring 26 artists, Three Turns stems from the concept that engaging artworks provide a viewer with three different entry points, prompting a deeper exploration into the work itself. Projected on the historic SFAI Tower at 800 Chestnut Street, which houses the Institution’s 150 year old archive, Three Turns will echo the notion of traveling three turns in time and space by showing the selected alumni video works on the Tower in dialogue with video works selected from the SFAI archive. Archive works were selected by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition Spirit of Disruption, and include: Nao Bustamante’s Untitled #1 (from the series "Earth People 2507"), Yin-Ju Chen’s Three Decades of Static, and Steven Arnold’s 1967 work The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique. Each night, each rotation, there will be an initial screening of Three Turns starting at 7pm followed by a Zoom based panel discussion between SFAI Film Archive Artists and Three Turn Jurors surrounding the response film/video works by the Artists in Response.
Over three nights on the San Francisco Art Institute's historic tower, our inaugural partnership with SFAI project, THREE TURNS brought forth a needed dialogue across generations through the juried response films by SFAI Alumni, selected films from SFAI's historic archives and nightly inclusive and community focused zoom based panel discussions featuring jurors Kathy Brew, Minoosh Zomorodinia, and Christopher Coppola in conversation with film archive artists Nao Bustamante, Yin-Ju Chen and Vishnu Dass, representing The Steven Arnold Archives.
"It was a true salute to the character of SFAI's community coming together to celebrate our school's 150th Anniversary," said SFAA Exhibition and Programming lead Beth Davila Waldman (Alumna 2005) upon wrapping up three evenings of moderating these special discussions. “THREE TURNS was a thoughtful juxtaposition of SFAI’s artistic past with its present — works bridged seamlessly in spirit by the universal dilemmas of the human experience,” said Vishnu Dass, Director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archives. Waldman worked in unison with SFAA President Maria Barbarist, SFAA Exhibition and Programming assistant Xiaopeng Liu along with SFAI's Kat Trataris, Niki Korth and the wizard behind the curtain, SFAI's Film Studio Manager Christopher Paddock, to bring THREE TURNS to life. But THREE TURNS was a collaborative project beyond our team and the film archive artists and response artists, it began with the selections of the archive films by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition "Spirit of Disruption". The collaboration continued beyond the powerful dances of film and sound on the tower with the exchanges on zoom that took place each evening between the initial and encore screenings between the jurors and the archive film artist, but with the extended SFAI community. It has been SFAA's mission to ignite and revive that sense of collectiveness. While it has seemed that for many a month our treasured school has been a crumling, over three turns, THREE TURNS reframed the image of SFAI as a strong beacon of light once again, made possible by what it has always fueled it- art. The last evening, through the wind and rain, TURN 3 of THREE TURNS held strong with perseverance. As juror and SFAI faculty (alum 1985) Christopher Coppola noted as that evening came to a close, "The SFAI tower was like a lighthouse using SFAI creativity to guide the way in the storm." It could not have been said better. Thank you to all who participated and supported THREE TURNS!
The SFAA Exhibition and Programming team
Participating Artists
Barry Despenza, Brandon Truscott, Caleb Duarte, Collin Pollard, Dale Hoyt, Deepali Raiththa, Don Hai Phu Daedalus, Elisabeth Kohnke, Floorplay, Gregorio Figueroa, Habibi Winter, Heather Jones, Jackie Buttice, Jade Mar, Jesse Eric Schmidt, Jevijoe Vitug, Lauren Szabo, Lourdes Portillo, Maureen Catbagan, Mark Freeman, Marshall Elliott, Mika Sperling, Murat Adash, Nasim Moghadam, Nao Bustamante, Ouater Sand, Pete Herzfeld, Steven Arnold, Ying Gu, Yin-Ju Chen, Zimo Zhao.