︎

Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects:
SFAI Histories / MATRIX 277


Since its inception at BAMPFA, the MATRIX exhibition series has been anchored by the following key characteristics: flexibility, spontaneity, and experimentation. When creating the series in 1978, then director Jim Elliott wrote: “We hope that MATRIX will from time to time operate as an informal space for experimentation; a place where invited artists can come and initiate new ideas that they might not otherwise consider in a more traditional formal museum context.” The experimental and flexible format of the series has produced some innovative and historically important exhibitions, such as Group Material’s AIDS Timeline for MATRIX 132 (1989–90), which grew into an artists’ book. For MATRIX 161 (1994), the project encompassed six billboards displaying Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work in various locations in Berkeley and Oakland, and MATRIX 229 (2009) assumed the form of a book by the design team Project Projects on the occasion of the series’ thirtieth anniversary. Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories / MATRIX 277 continues this spirit of experimentation outside the museum galleries, bringing together a network of individuals to produce an exhibition in the form of a website. In this way, it is the first of its kind within the series’ history.

Read Full Essay

Download Catalog 



Video




Contributors




Becky Alexander

Editor

Becky Alexander has been working in the SFAI library for the past fifteen years. It has never stopped being interesting, surprising, and full of good people.


Jeff Gunderson

Editor

Jeff Gunderson has been the librarian and archivist at SFAI since 1981. He has written and lectured on the history of California art and photography as well as the influence of art libraries on artists. He is currently working on a collection of essays about open-water swimming.


Nina Hubbs Zurier

Editor

Nina Hubbs Zurier is an artist, SFAI alumna, and former staff at both BAMPFA and SFAI. She lives in Berkeley, California, and Reykjavík, Iceland. Her interests include social justice, the environment, photography, and Icelandic horses. Her most recent exhibition is Gróður [Vegetation] at Berg Contemporary, Reykjavík.


Apsara DiQuinzio

Co-organizer

Apsara DiQuinzio is senior curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator at BAMPFA, where she has overseen the MATRIX Program for Contemporary Art since 2012.


Claire Frost

Co-organizer

Claire Frost is curatorial assistant at BAMPFA. She earned her master’s in art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, is the cofounder and co-curator of the curatorial collective COLLABO, and recently started an art space called Claire Frost in her San Francisco apartment.

MacFadden & Thorpe

Design

MacFadden & Thorpe is a graphic design studio based in the Mission District of San Francisco. Much of their focus is on Bay Area arts, and has included work for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, the San Francisco Art Book Fair, the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, the Oxbow School, THE THING Quarterly, and many individual artists.


Genine Lentine

Contributor

Genine Lentine is a poet and interdisciplinary artist. She is the author of Poses: An Essay Drawn from the Model, and the chapbooks Archaeopteryx, Found Dharma Talks, and Mr. Worthington’s Beautiful Experiments on Splashes. From 2013 to 2020, she taught writing at SFAI, where she still tends a meadow. www.geninelentine.com



April Martin

Contributor

April Martin is a media artist working in film, photography, and printmaking. As a community organizer, April does legal and food justice work to support marginalized communities. April has a BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is based in West Oakland, California. www.fuckgentrification.com


Rye Purvis

Contributor

Yá’át’ééh, Shí éí Rye Purvis yinishyé. Dzi ł t ł'ahnii nishłį́. Bilagáana bashishchiin. Ahéhee’. Rye Purvis was raised in New Mexico and moved to San Francisco in 2007 to attend SFAI. She graduated with a BFA in painting in 2011 and continues to live and work in the Bay Area.


Sherwin Rio

Contributor

Sherwin Rio is an interdisciplinary artist with a dual MFA/MA in studio art / history and theory of contemporary art from SFAI (2019). His recent awards include the 2019 International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement Award and the San Francisco Foundation's 2017 Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Fellowship Award.


Christopher Adam Williams

Contributor

Christopher Adam Williams is a visual artist whose practice utilizes portraiture and figurative painting to convey complex narratives, including that of race and gender, originating from a deep empathy with his subjects. Born in Oakland, California, Christopher currently has his studio based in San Francisco, where he resides with his wife.


Special Thanks to


Jennifer Boynton
AJ Fox
Laura Kiernan
Mary Kate Murphy
Chris Paddock
Seraphina Perkins
Alex Peterson
John Priola
Sidonie Roddam
Hannah Rohrich
Zack Schomp


Credits

The copyright for all images is
retained by the artists, unless otherwise specified.

All materials from the SFAI Archives are courtesy SFAI.

Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories / MATRIX 277 is organized by Apsara DiQuinzio, senior curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator, with Claire Frost, curatorial assistant, in association with SFAI and MacFadden & Thorpe. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAMPFA Trustees.