You might want to think about the first-ever San Francisco International Art Exposition (SFIAE) as a giant Whitman's Sampler Box for the art world. One hundred galleries from around the world (a majority of them from California, Chicago, and New York, though 13 other countries are represented as well) will take over booths in an upscale trade show-like setting, to exhibit both hot 'n' trendy and established artists from their stables. The producers of the event were interested in putting San Francisco on the map of the fall international art tour, in which dealers, collectors, curators, and aficionados traverse the globe doing business at fairs in cities like S‹o Paulo, Paris, and Berlin.
Not only will the SFIAE be a scene, it will be a great arena in which to see the different kinds of art-making practices, concerns, and aesthetics that emerge out of varying cultural and geographical climates. Big-deal artists Cindy Sherman, Lucian Freud, Raymond Pettibone, and Gerhard Richter will be represented alongside emerging artists like Damien Hirst, Sam Taylor Wood, and Joaquin Torres-Garcia. Hours for the show are as follows: Friday, Oct. 2, and Saturday, Oct. 3, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, Oct. 4, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. There will be an opening night preview on Thursday, Oct. 1. The show will take place at the Fort Mason Center in the Herbst and Festival pavilions, Marina & Buchanan, S.F. Tickets are available at the door and are $10 for general admission and $7 for students, groups, and seniors. For more information call 877-ART-FAIR.
And where there is art action, local gallery directors Julie Deamer and Jim Schatz of Four Walls and Scene/Escena, respectively, have planned an equal -- and possibly more volatile -- reaction. Deamer and Schatz created "SAP," which they've dubbed "the residue of the San Francisco art scene," in response to the high cost of participating in the SFIAE. "SAP" will operate on Lombard Street at the Lanai Motel, just blocks away from the SFIAE. By creating site-specific pieces, participating artists promise to let no surface of the motel's impoverished modernist aesthetic go unnoticed. Local favorites Terry Hoff, Kathryn Van Dyke, and curator/artist team Glen Helfand and Didi Dunphy will show everything from painting to video to photography alongside artists from Alleged Fine Arts, an independent New York gallery. Downstairs in the carport of the motel, 13 bands and performing groups will be whoopin' it up from noon until 6 p.m. There will be additional, daylong performances by James Bewley and Horea and Human Art Resources. In all, over 30 visual artists will be represented on Saturday, Oct. 3, from 1 to 11 p.m. at the Lanai Motel, 2361 Lombard (at Scott), S.F. The event is free and there will be a shuttle bus between Fort Mason and the motel. For more info, call the "SAP" line at 675-9877 or go to www.sap98.com.
-- Marcy Freedman
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