San Francisco’s Hosfelt Gallery, located in the city’s South of Market neighborhood, was founded in 1996 by Todd Hosfelt. Focusing on contemporary art with an international scope, Hosfelt showcases work with a strong technical element that takes a conceptual approach to vast sociopolitical themes. It exhibits work from a number of emerging international artists and works to get their pieces included in both museums and private collections. Hosfelt also features local talent, including Jim Campbell, Liliana Porter, Crystal Liu and Julie Chang.
Through March 26, Liu will be showing a series of paintings that takes elements of nature and creates narratives with an ominous undertone.
Chang will also be displaying her latest work, which focuses on Central Asian textile design. Her project was developed during a residency at San Francisco’s de Young Museum as a means to explore her experiences as a first-generation Chinese American growing up in suburban Orange County.
In early February, Chang spent a few days covering Hosfelt’s white walls with vinyl stencils and painting layers of traditional Central Asian motifs juxtaposed with Western symbols like designer logos.
“She is exploring the West’s fascination and romanticism of the Orient and her own ambivalent relationship to it,” Hosfelt partner Dianne Dec says.
In 2006, Hosfelt branched out by opening a gallery space in Manhattan, and, for the past five years, the gallery has expanded its artists’ appeal to a new audience, while also giving East Coast artists the opportunity to showcase their work in the San Francisco space.
“We wanted a chance,” Dec says, “to give a different venue and visibility to the West Coast artists that we work with that have not had exposure in New York.”
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