Continuing through September 5, 2025
In “So the city can exist,” curators Nick Makanna and MacKenzie Stevens conjure the ethos of the city through a thoughtful selection of joyful and whimsical objects. In a presentation of mostly paintings, sculptures and textiles, there are two glaring and presumably deliberate omissions of related subject matter, people and tech, making the show feel like an embrace of what is overlooked and vulnerable here and now. The exhibition’s title and thematic premise refer to Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” (1972), which, along with a 1960s photograph by the German couple Hilla and Bernd Becher (an outlier here) and a reading nook with a collection of obscure and mostly historically oriented city-related books, establish a nostalgic frame of reference.
I encountered a fire hydrant at the entrance of the gallery, one of three works by Malcolm Kenter. I didn’t give it much thought initially, except to wonder if I’d parked too close to a real one. Another work by Kenter, “Square D Box,” consists of two small children’s animal stickers on a circuit breaker box. Wondering if a wily toddler had pulled a prank while the grownups gabbed, I perused the checklist for the works’ media: “Enamel on metal, plastic, wood & gouache on paper.” I looked closer to distinguish the trompe l’oeil effect. I felt disappointed, but in a meaningful way.
Like the Bechers’ “Cooling Tower,” Kenter’s work is indexical, a catalog of gradually outdated infrastructure which emphasizes the strange and ironic way objects shorn of their utility and social relevance tend to become more visible and aesthetically engaging. What was once an overlooked piece of the industrial urban landscape suddenly feels to be a sign of both connection to other people and human inefficiency. This is art as the stubborn details of a soon-to-be bygone era that persist, like calluses, on the smoothed-over facade of techno-utopia.
Mansur Nurullah and Isabel Nuño de Buen mine their material from the detritus of the city floor, literally and symbolically. Nurullah’s wall-hanging sculpture, “It’s in the Air (1929-2006)” is composed of textiles he collects on outings in San Francisco, while Nuño de Buen’s multi-media sculptures, some of the most interesting and transcendent works in the exhibition, combine layers of familiar and mysterious substances that appear indiscriminately scraped from the city’s byways and avenues. In “Codex 34” and “Codex 11 (thinking of you — in another time and space),” her material selections suggest remnants from construction sites, doodles on napkins or gauzy fabric, and children’s friendship bracelets holding together pieces of infrastructural and organic debris. Both works are executed with great care, forming delicate, totem-like bundles which operate as packages full of coded messages and as beings in and of themselves. They integrate not pieces of the city but their own complex urban and personal ecosystems whose fuel is curiosity and imagination.
Signage, a foundational part of city life, is a shared medium in a number of works. “Woerner’s,” an exquisite Rose D’Amato painting, is hung frustratingly high, presumably as an overly literal reference to her own familial background in sign painting. Its nod to the aesthetics of blue-collar labor lying behind the technical proficiency of her craft and personal iconography had me wishing I could take it in more intimately, rather than above a lamp (“Milk Thistle”) by Ross Hansen. From afar, the lamp appears ethereal, floating like a jellyfish. Up close its illuminated bulb appears supported by, as one observer remarked, “used condoms, plastic bags or those dog chew toys.” Given its material evocations it seemed thematically fitting despite its incidental role keeping the D’Amato painting at a distance.
William Scott and Christopher Suarez bring playfulness, humanity, and personal history to local business signage and cityscapes. The imagery in their work strikes a contrast with billboards and storefronts increasingly coopted by warring AI companies. To Scott the city is the source and jumping-off point for drawings and paintings that translate the artist’s fantastical and jubilantly imagined world into tourist maps of places that exist in his mind. Including “Balconies Hawaii Resorts of Praise Frisco with Skyscraper Balconies High Rises for Good People Everywhere, WS 729,” they are destinations you wish you could visit.
Two paintings by the artist Tabboo!, “Fancy Fire Escapes” and “Snowy View from Sutton Place,” brought me back to the vibrancy and immediacy of the New York street hustle, the faux-brand peddlers and street artists who line up collapsible tables in front of the Metropolitan Museum to sell campy paintings of familiar landmarks in splashy colors.
The reading nook featuring bespoke ‘brick’ stools could be misinterpreted as an installation (Can I sit here? Can I touch that?). No, it’s a mini-library, featuring books on loan from William Stout Architectural Books. With even a quick flip-through, they offer additional insights that enhance the meaning of the objects on display, including “The Vacant Lot as an Ecosystem” (1987, University of California Press) with its edifying “In these days of rising prices and declining values, it’s always good to read a new California Natural History Guide.” In “Collage City” an introductory quote from the late sociologist Karl Mannheim reads, “Whenever the utopia disappears, history ceases to be a process leading to an ultimate end.”
People are attracted to the city for experience and opportunity, and they leave when they’ve had too much or not enough. Priced out, forced out, tired out, burnt out, they disappear only to be replaced by younger fortune-seekers. But the city itself persists — we rarely hear about ghost cities, only ghost towns. The city is Heraclitus’ river, ever-present and in constant flux. As I walked back to my car, I thought about this city and others, and how the artists who stay are the ones who will be part of its next version, repaired and regenerated. While “So the city can exist” may be more about the things we’ve left behind, it is made by artists whose lives, works, and wanderings play an active part in the continual reinvention of a living city.
