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Eclectic Style and Experimental Aesthetics Lit Up the FOG Design+Art Gala

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By Larissa Archer

While any art world gala is a place to see and be seen, the FOG Fair gala stands out as one where even a sartorially disappointing city like San Francisco really brings it. Maybe it’s the focus on design and furniture that nudges people who might otherwise show up in safe formal wear to celebrate blue chip conceptual art, instead, they really try to match the surprising experimental aesthetics of the work on display. Wednesday night at Fort Mason was no different–the guests were sometimes as stunning and outré as the work itself–and sometimes more.

All photography by Larissa Archer

Expert improbable combination of bold, flat hot pink in complex origami-like shapes with statement accessories in sculpted and embossed gold by artist Sarah Tevebaugh.  

Tino, a sales associate at Neiman Marcus, somehow elevated simple work clothes and sneakers to the level of chic using only a wide brimmed hat and thick-rimmed glasses. Arvin, a hairstylist, distinguished a vintage-cut tux with an oversized bow, a sweet purse, and defiant white socks. I am glad that men with such style have a say in people’s fashion choices and execution.

Feminist legend and photographer Renee Cox mixed textures and patterns beautifully in a colorscape favoring rich golds and browns with cheeky splashes of red and silver pointy-toed heels peeking out, creating an image of such coolth that even the piece of dim sum in her chopsticks looked like skillfully picked accessory. Michele Pred, in brilliant rosy florals reminiscent of Pucci prints, dons a purse of her own design. I became fascinated with her led activism quote purses when I first started seeing them both on display and adorning attendees at art fairs a few years ago.  

Devlin Shand is an art and editorial photographer and the director of Queer Arts Featured (Queer A.F. in the late Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera space), and at glittering events like these he is known as the sartorially breathtaking society photog who should be in front of the camera as well as behind. Charley Hasenbeck (my date) next to him is wearing a large statement piece by Masha Archer. and is a well-known underground arts organizer and champion of San Francisco collaborative culture. 

Designer Courtney Saunders in impeccable vintage from a fallen, unnamed local fashion icon.

The artist who collaborates with the Sun: pieces from Chris McCaw’s lauded Sunburn series at Cheryl Haines, started years ago when the analog photographer began a long exposure, drank too much whiskey, and fell asleep. His explorations since, taking him to different countries, latitudes, and vistas, are darkly hypnotic and are held in the most celebrated photography collections in the world.

Symphony in Wood: Christopher Kurtz’s Raw Edges at Sarah Myerscough Gallery exalted wood’s exquisite color variations, textures, and fibrous channels exposed in the medium with furniture made to show rather than hide the material it was made from. As we hurtle towards man-made climate disaster, I appreciate an artist who defers to nature in this way, not only using it for its functionality but attempting to showcase its aesthetic and sensual aspects in their own right. 

I loved Cecilia Vicuña’s La Habana at Lehmann Maupin.The robust femininity in her curves, the vividly colored flowers with their crisply drawn petals, yet everything seeming to fall from the sky… One of the possible origins of the name of Cuba’s capital is “heaven.”


Fog Fair was held at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, for more programming visit them here.

Read our coverage of the current Kota Ezawa Exhibit at Gallery 308 in Fort Mason here.

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