Entering Schwab Hall at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for Art Bash, there was a sense of luscious serenity.
Amid British artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien’s installation for the event’s dinner on Wednesday, April 24, the ticket desks and museum store were swathed in blue fabric and adorned with the British-born artist’s gloriously cinematic photography. It was like being inside one of the multi-screen film works Julien is acclaimed for.
Enlarged portraits from Julien’s 2022 film “Once Again (Statues Never Die)” and draped fabric created a tunnel effect. Photographic profiles of actors André Holland (“Moonlight”) and Devon Terrell (the Barack Obama biopic, “Barry”) were lit with such precise arcs as to make the snow falling in front of the tuxedoed men appear to fly off the prints. Shades of blue in the fabrics and lighting gave the work, titled “Diasporic Dream Space 1 and 2,” a nocturnal glow.
“The snow is in reverse. You enter into it, and then they greet you,” Julien, a distinguished professor of arts at UC Santa Cruz and co-founder of the school’s Isaac Julien Lab, with his husband Mark Nash, told the Chronicle. (The couple divide their time between the Bay Area and London, where Julien was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.)
“Once Again (Statues Never Die)” explores the relationship between writer-philosopher Alain Locke (Holland) and sculptor Richmond Barthé (Terrell), both key figures in the Harlem Renaissance, and their critical conversations around material culture and collecting. The film’s meditations on art, objects and the roles of institutions felt fitting for Art Bash, SFMOMA’s annual fundraiser that this year secured more than $3.4 million for the museum, the highest-grossing Art Bash for ticket sales since the event began in 2016.
“Diasporic Dream Space 1” is in the museum’s permanent collection as well as Julien’s nine-screen film work “Ten Thousand Waves,” a project made in China that explores the country’s ancient past and its connections to the present. Spanning nearly the length of the hall, a series of Julien’s “Green Screen Goddess” photos from “Ten Thousand Waves” gave the impression that the white robed figures were floating across the tables like phantoms. Bookending the hall were two plexiglass walls with an image from the film “Glass House, Prism,” which has a multihued gradient over the image of a formal Chinese parlor that brought color into the space.
“When it’s a block as opposed to a photo on the wall, it’s more an installation,” said Julien. “I tried to work that sense of infinity into the space. Flight and ascendancy were the themes.”
On the heels of Julien’s major survey exhibition at the Tate Modern in London last year, “What Freedom Means to Me,” and its current presentation at Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, Netherlands, Julien is an exciting get. Given his noted abilities to immerse audiences with his multi-screen works, he’s also an interesting choice for Art Bash, where the atmosphere is intended to go beyond decor and become its own distinct work of art.
“It all started in the Bay Area, in a way,” Julien said of his recent wave of shows. “That initial exhibition of ‘Lessons of the Hour’ at the McEvoy (Foundation for the Arts) in 2020 created this kind of crescendo. It’s been quite remarkable, and marks a really amazing reception to my work here.”
And there’s more opportunities for Bay Area audiences to see Julien’s work. During his remarks at Art Bash’s dinner, the artist announced a survey exhibition at the de Young Museum, curated by Claudia Schmuckli, is scheduled for next spring.
But Julien was just one of the highlights at Art Bash. Other notable artists in attendance included Berkeley photographer Richard Misrach, who created his own encompassing experience with a premium party lounge that included projections of his work accompanied by music created by his son, Jake Bloomfield-Misrach, an award-winning composer, mixer and sound designer. San Francisco painter Chelsea Ryoko Wong transformed the museum’s white box theater with her own installation with music by DJ Alex Shen of Lower Grand Radio and cocktails by Alex Lauritzen of the Mushroom. Performers on the atrium mainstage included DJ collective Sazon Libre and the night’s headliner, Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack.
SFMOMA Director Christopher Bedford pointed to the night’s success as a sign of the city’s continuing recovery and proof of the arts’ essential role in that effort.
Bedford, who praised his predecessor Neal Benezra — in attendance Wednesday night after stepping down after 19 years amid controversial claims of inequity at the institution — for laying the foundation for the institution, noted that attending the Venice Biennale international art exhibit, he was even more excited about the work at SFMOMA. He pointed to the current exhibition “Creative Growth: The House That Art Built,” which celebrates the famed Oakland art center for the developmentally disabled, and teased an upcoming installation by Stockton native Kara Walker slated to open in July as just a few exciting developments.
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