Collection Features the Work of Internationally Renowned Artists
Who Have Ties to the Bay Area SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 14
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- To celebrate the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art (SFMOMA)'s 75th anniversary, Gap is collaborating with
the museum to introduce a unique line of eight limited-edition
artist-designed T-shirts. (Photo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100114/SF37632) The T-shirts
were designed by nine well-known artists who have connections to
the Bay Area, including Rosana Castrillo Diaz, Simon Evans, Chris
Johanson, Kerry James Marshall, Barry McGee, Ed Ruscha, Leslie
Shows, and Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel. All of these artists are
also represented in the series of SFMOMA's anniversary exhibitions
and programs entitled 75 Years of Looking Forward. "As a San
Francisco-based company with a long history of supporting the arts,
we're honored to partner with SFMOMA to celebrate the museum's 75th
anniversary," said Marka Hansen, President of Gap North America.
"This limited edition T-shirt collection celebrates the
intersection of art and fashion and enables people to experience
the work of these distinguished artists in a different way."
Starting January 16, the T-shirts will be available for $24.50 at
the SFMOMA MuseumStore, online at sfmoma.org/museumstore, and in 13
Bay Area Gap stores--including Stonestown Galleria, Chestnut
Street, Embarcadero Center, Jefferson Street, Market Street, Post
Street in San Francisco; Bay Street in Emeryville; Northgate Mall
and The Village at Corte Madera in Marin County; and Hillsdale
Mall, Burlingame Avenue, Stanford Shopping Center, and Valley Fair
Mall in the South Bay. "We're delighted to partner with Gap and
this amazing group of artists to recognize our 75th anniversary,"
states SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra. "It will be a great pleasure
to see the Bay Area community wear these original T-shirts with
pride throughout our anniversary year." About the Artists Rosana
Castrillo Diaz Diaz's work intentionally hovers at the edge of
perceptibility--at the breakdown, she says, of visual familiarity
and comprehension, somewhere in a zone between material and
immaterial that is endemic to present-day experience. Barely
visible against the gallery wall, her web-like veils reveal
themselves slowly, occupying a place between nonexistence and
being. Diaz also makes traditional works on paper--drawings that
explore fragments of visual images derived from recognizable
objects, such as the printed page or the edge of a spiral notebook.
A native of Spain, Diaz received a BFA from the Cleveland Institute
of Art in 1996 and an MFA from Mills College in 2003. Simon Evans A
self-taught artist, Evans began his creative life as a writer
before pursuing visual art. Inspired by his reading of Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Evans was intrigued by the idea of
approaching art as an explorer of the everyday; as such, he
incorporates everyday materials such as paper, tape, ballpoint
pens, and liquid paper in his works. His collage and assemblage
pieces often take the form of lists, diagrams, or maps that reveal
an archival impulse to sort and classify the chaos of human
experience. Born in London in 1972, Simon Evans has lived and
worked in San Francisco since 1994. Chris Johanson Johanson, a key
figure among San Francisco's Mission School artists, combines
social criticism with a certain optimism in his installations. His
work often conceals sophisticated content beneath a seemingly
naive, folk-art style of execution. He works in the
street/skate/surf vein that has come to be one of the most
identifiable aspects of contemporary Bay Area art. Johanson is a
native of San Jose, California. Kerry James Marshall Marshall's
rich and varied body of work includes large-scale paintings,
installations, and public projects that explore issues of racial
identity and black history. He received his BFA from the Otis Art
Institute, in Los Angeles, was a resident fellow at the Studio
Museum, in Harlem, and in 1987 moved to Chicago, where he began
teaching at the University of Illinois. His work has been widely
collected by museums throughout the United States and has been
featured in major national and international exhibitions. Barry
McGee A lauded cult figure in a bicoastal subculture that comprises
skaters, graffiti artists, and West Coast surfers, McGee was born
in 1966 in California, where he continues to live and work. In 1991
he received a BFA in painting and printmaking from the San
Francisco Art Institute. His drawings, paintings, and mixed-media
installations take their inspiration from contemporary urban
culture, incorporating elements such as empty liquor bottles and
spray-paint cans, tagged signs, wrenches, and scrap wood or metal.
McGee is also a graffiti artist, working on the streets of
America's cities since the 1980s, where he is known by the name
"Twist." Ed Ruscha A painter, printmaker and filmmaker, Ruscha was
born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1937, and lived some 15 years in
Oklahoma City before moving permanently to Los Angeles where he
studied at the Chouinard Art Institute from 1956 through 1960. By
the early 1960s he was well-known for his paintings, collages, and
printmaking, and for his association with the Ferus Gallery. He
later achieved recognition for his paintings incorporating words
and phrases and for his many photographic books, all of which were
influenced by the deadpan irreverence of the Pop art movement.
Leslie Shows In her large works on wood panels, Shows presents
landscapes littered with the detritus of industry. Using paint and
collage, she submits the medium to the message: oil paint resembles
the greasy rainbow of an oil slick, watercolor bleeds to create a
horizon hazy with pollutants, graph paper stands in for salt and
introduces a geometry resonant with the artist's interest in
crystalline structures. Shows received a BFA from the San Francisco
Art Institute in 1999 and an MFA from California College of the
Arts in 2006. Born in Manteca, California in 1977, Shows currently
lives and works in San Francisco. Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel
Sultan was a leading figure in the Bay Area art community, both as
an artist and a teacher. For more than 30 years, he explored the
boundaries of documentary practice. His first major work was
Evidence, a book of appropriated photographs that was a
collaborative project with artist Mike Mandel; a subsequent
exhibition was organized by SFMOMA in 1977. These pictures came
from the files of government agencies, local corporations, and
research institutions and, assembled in the narrative format of a
book, produced a witty, provocative, and insightful look at
contemporary American culture. The SFMOMA MuseumStore is also
producing a special line of products designed in honor of the 75th
anniversary, including mugs, T-shirts, hats, notebooks,
sketchbooks, luggage tags, business card holders, water bottles,
coffee tumblers, and tote bags that will feature the 75th
anniversary "starburst" logo. Print-on-demand posters featuring
artworks from the suite of SFMOMA's 75th anniversary exhibitions
will also be offered. For more information, visit
sfmoma.org/anniversary. SFMOMA Media Contacts: Libby Garrison,
415.357.4177, Robyn Wise, 415.357.4172, Sandra Farish Sloan,
415.357.4174, Gap Media Contacts: Olivia Doyne, 415.427.8496,
Kimberly Terry, 415.427.4844, Museum hours: Open daily (except
Wednesdays): 11 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.; open late Thursdays, until 8:45
p.m. Summer hours (Memorial Day to Labor Day): Open at 10 a.m.
Closed Wednesdays and the following public holidays: New Year's
Day, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. The museum is open
the Wednesday between Christmas and New Year's Day. Koret Visitor
Education Center: Open daily (except Wednesdays): 11 a.m. to 5:30
p.m.; open late Thursdays, until 8:30 p.m. Summer hours: Open at 10
a.m. Admission prices: adults: $15; seniors and students: $9;
SFMOMA members and children 12 and under: free. Admission is free
the first Tuesday of each month and half-price on Thursdays after 6
p.m. SFMOMA is easily accessible by Muni, BART, Golden Gate
Transit, SamTrans, and Caltrain. Hourly, daily, and monthly parking
is available at the SFMOMA Garage at 147 Minna Street. For parking
information, call 415.348.0971. Visit our website atsfmoma.org or
call 415.357.4000 for more information. About Gap Inc. Gap Inc. is
a leading global specialty retailer offering clothing, accessories
and personal care products for men, women, children, and babies
under the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime, and Athleta
brand names. Fiscal 2008 sales were $14.5 billion. Gap Inc.
operates more than 3,100 stores in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Canada, France, Japan and Ireland. In addition, Gap Inc.
is expanding its international presence with franchise agreements
in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. For more
information, please visit gapinc.com.
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100114/SF37632 DATASOURCE:
Gap Inc. CONTACT: Olivia Doyne, +1-415-427-8496, ; or Kimberly
Terry, +1-415-427-4844, , both of Gap; or Libby Garrison,
+1-415-357-4177, ; or Robyn Wise, +1-415-357-4172, ; or Sandra
Farish Sloan, +1-415-357-4174, , all of SFMOMA Web Site:
http://www.sfmoma.org/
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