Between Two Worlds

This installation of the newly dedicated California galleries focuses on Bay Area and Los Angeles artists active from the 1960s to now. Some of the works on display explore the political possibilities of decoration, celebrating styles historically dismissed as “feminine” and unambitious. Others delight in the California landscape, their bold experiments with color, perception, and light inspired by the state’s visual pleasures — including its smog-enhanced sunsets. But all, regardless of topic or form, exist “between two worlds,” a phrase that Berkeley-born artist John McCracken used to describe art’s union of the physical world with the world of imagination. The art of California is one of SFMOMA’s great strengths, and this presentation spotlights new additions to our holdings, as well as rarely shown works from the collection.

Header image: Elliott Hundley, Agave, 2010 (detail); collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase; © Elliott Hundley