For-Site Foundation – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

With Wind @Large Ai Weiwei Part 1

Posted by Cindy on January 13, 2015

Jan 132015

Alcatraz Island
September 27, 2014 to April 26, 2015

If you have read this blog often you will know that I am a huge Ai Weiwei fan. I finally had the opportunity to visit the installation of his work on Alcatraz Island, and walked away as impressed as ever. There is so much that has been written on this exhibit that I am going to simply show you a few photos with explanations and encourage you to catch it before it leaves.

Notice the “Twitter Birds” as eyes. This is to represent Ai WeiWei’s motto: “Don’t retreat – ReTweet”.

The exhibit is found in many different areas, and I do not recommend attempting to do both the exhibit and a visit to see Alcatraz, you won’t have enough time to do them both adequately.

We began in The New Industries Building. You are greeted with the mouth of a hand painted/paper dragon that is simply huge.

This portion is titled With Wind, and its placement is, like all the pieces in the exhibit, part of the message. This particular building housed “privileged” prisoners who were offered the opportunity to work as a reward for good behavior. Work offered an escape from boredom and isolation, and it could earn prisoners a shorter sentence. Placing the dragon here shows the contracdition between freedom and restriction.

Everyone of Us is a Potential Convict – Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei has said that for him, the dragon represents not imperial authority, but personal freedom: “everybody has this power.” The individual kites that make up the dragon’s body carry quotations from activists who have been imprisoned or exiled, including Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden, and Ai Weiwei himself.

Privacy is a Function of Liberty – Edward Snowden

Around the room are kites decorated with stylized renderings of birds and flowers. These natural forms are meant to allude to a stark human reality.

It is also important to note that the birds are a reflection of the fact that Alcatraz Island is a bird sanctuary, and if you take the time to watch the video you will learn that the installation of the exhibit was during Cormorant mating season, making it all that much more difficult.

Our March to Freedom is Irreversible – Nelson Mandela

The exhibit is a collaboration between For-Site, the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy.

For many the juxtaposition of Edward Snowden and Nelson Mandela can be jarring, this site is about Art, not politics, I will leave you to have those conversations elsewhere.

Goldsworthy III

Posted by Cindy on November 1, 2013

Nov 012013

San Francisco Presidio
Main Parade Ground
Anza and Sheridan

This is the third installation of Andy Goldsworthy’s at the Presidio in San Francisco. It is titled Tree Fall. There are two other Goldsworthy’s on the Presidio Grounds that have appeared in this site before and can be seen here.

The exhibit is in the Old Stone Powder Magazine on the Main Parade Ground. The room is 20 X 17 feet with walls two feet thick. The building dates to 1863, is one of the oldest structures at the fort and has never been opened to the public. Originally a domed roof topped the structure. This was so that in the event of an explosion the blast would project upward. The tile roof was added in 1941 as the post adopted a uniform Mission style of architecture. The building was used to store blank rounds for the daily 5pm evening gun salute until 1994 when the Army departed the post.

Goldsworthy’s team was not allowed to touch the walls. They built four walls inside the four walls with ventilation holes along the bottom, they then put in a dropped ceiling and poured a cement floor.

The tree is a Eucalyptus felled during the reconstruction of Doyle Drive.

An assembly line of community volunteers were brought in to mix the clay. The primary material was dirt unearthed during excavation for the nearby officers’ club restoration. The binding agent is a combination of straw and human hair from local salons. The clay was then put on by Goldsworthy himself.

“There is a lot of love and understanding with clay that has been won over many years,” he says, “and you never know how it will turn out.”

His hope was that the clay would dry and crack into puzzle pieces, to give the art detail and intricacy. This is a concept that Goldsworthy has been refining since he first built a clay wall, at the Haines Gallery at 49 Geary St., in 1996 (shown here in a San Francisco Chronicle Photograph). The Haines Gallery is the founder of the Fore-Site Foundation, and curator of all three of Goldsworthy’s installation at the Presidio.

Please don’t get me wrong. I have been a big, big fan of Andy Goldsworthy since I first discovered his book Stone in 1994, and I do own every one of his books. I also have traveled out of my way by many miles to see an installation if there is one near where I am. However, it is time, Presidio Trust and For-Site Foundation, to give other artists space. We have so very many great artists in California, and especially the city of San Francisco, it is time we honored them with space as unique and fabulous as the public space of the Presidio.

The textures and play of light in this exhibit are a photographers dream.

This is the only light that enters the magazine.

The plaque reads:

OLD STONE POWDER MAGAZINE
Constructed by the U.S. Army
After the presidio was occupied
by American Forces
Built of materials salvaged from earlier
Spanish of Mexican structures
It dates back to the period of 1847-1863
Plaque presented by the Presidio Society Inc.
1958

The public can view the exhibit on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 am to 4 pm through December 1, or on weekdays by reservation.