Jessica Silverman Gallery Opens Area in San Francisco’s Chinatown – ARTnews.com

The last exhibition that San Francisco dealer Jessica Silverman put on was a solo exhibition by artist Isaac Julien. It was open for exactly one day, March 13, 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic forced the United States and much of the world into lockdown. Now, over a year later, Silverman is ready to open their next show, this time in a brand new and much larger space in historic Chinatown.
Jessica Silverman Gallery has established itself as one of the country’s leading galleries in its thirteenth year, representing established artists such as Julien, Judy Chicago and Andrea Bowers, as well as emerging stars such as Matthew Angelo Harrison, Sadie Barnette and Woody De Othello. “I firmly believe in going slowly and focusing and staying on the right track where you want to be,” Silverman told ARTnews. “That’s how I work with our artists. I am not interested in the quick burn. I am interested in the long career. “
On the subject of matching items
The new Jessica Silverman Gallery is located at 621 Grant Avenue, across from the city’s famous Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral. It’s 5,000 square feet – almost twice the size of the previous room – with a private viewing room on the mezzanine and 18 foot ceilings. The space was designed by Abigail Turin, co-founder of Kallos Turin, an architecture firm based in London and San Francisco. Two commissioned works by gallery artists will also be shown: a tile wall piece for the bathroom on the ground floor by Claudia Wieser and a cherry wood door for the viewing room by Julian Hoeber.
“There is an experimental moment when you take in the volume of space and leave the street behind while you are inside and focus on the art,” said Silverman. “The space is really for my artists and my clients. I wanted to think about how we can accommodate their needs in this room. I’m excited to see the kind of exhibitions we can do here – being ambitious is definitely something I really want to push forward. “
The gallery is currently showing a solo exhibition of works by Clare Rojas, a kind of gentle opening, before the first group show “We Are Here” opens on May 27th. This exhibition will include work by gallery artists such as Julien, Bowers, Conrad, Egyir and Matt Lipps, as well as a few other artists the gallery does not currently represent, including Hernan Bas and Lam Tung-Pang, but who will have solo shows at the gallery in 2022.
“The show is a way of saying, ‘This is the place to be,’ without explicitly mentioning it – it’s a location finder,” said Silverman. “The topic is present and to be here.”
Installation view of “Clare Rojas: Here We Go”, 2021, at the Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.
Photo Henrik Kam
After starting a two-year project space, Silverman founded her gallery in 2008 and opened a space in the Dog Patch neighborhood of San Francisco. It unveiled its latest location in the Tenderloin district in 2013, but felt that it had outgrown that space about three years ago. At that point, she was looking for a bigger one in San Francisco.
She was eventually introduced to Betty Louie, a Sino-American community leader and real estate owner. The two walked around Chinatown, and Louie gave Silverman the location of the land. “Betty has a very forward-thinking approach to what she wants from Chinatown,” said Silverman. The dealer found the new location in autumn 2019 and started the renovation in February 2020. The opening was planned for the summer – and then the pandemic.
Silverman said because she is moving to such a historic neighborhood – it’s the oldest and largest Chinatown in the country – she feels it is important to act as a good neighbor to the community’s long-time residents and businesses. She hopes the gallery can later work with the San Francisco Chinese Cultural Center, a nonprofit organization just blocks away, on programming.
The CCC provided the gallery with a list of local businesses run by community members for support. In addition, Silverman and her team are working on a 1 mile (1.6 km) walk through Chinatown that gallery visitors can take to visit other local businesses in the neighborhood. “I’m trying to create a support system with my colleagues and neighbors,” said Silverman. “I hope we become a place they come when they need things too, so it works both ways.”
In January, the Gagosian mega-gallery confirmed it had closed its San Francisco location. But Silverman said she feels obliged to run an internationally influential gallery in San Francisco for the years to come – she signed a 12-year lease for the Chinatown space. She added, “At the end of Gagosian’s closure [here]People may think you can’t do what we do here in San Francisco. You can and we do – well. To do what we are good at, slow walking and specificity are the keys to our success. “