Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is pleased to announce its Inaugural Exhibition, OPEN, featuring the works of C.E.B. Reas, Camille Utterback and Stamen Design.  Including new works from three pioneers in the field of digital art, OPEN celebrates GAFFTA’s arrival as San Francisco’s leading digital arts organization and cornerstone of The City’s emerging Tenderloin Arts District.

OPEN commences with a series of fundraising events, public celebrations and workshops October 1st – 4th, with related programming running through November 18th (see full calendar of Grand Opening events below).

The multidisciplinary works in OPEN span a range of formats and techniques: from prints and sculptures to interactive video, generative processes and cartography.  While the styles of each featured artists are unique and diverse, all the works in GAFFTA’s Inaugural Exhibition exemplify the core values of our organization’s creative vision and civic mission: technology, community and openness.

Main Gallery: C.E.B Reas

C.E.B Reas is a principal player in the software art movement and co-creator of the free, open-source programming language Process­ing.  Reas’s vast body of work explores natural processes through the lens of digital media. His software installations, unique prints and relief sculptures are inspired by biology, natural intelligence and the principles of emergence. The possibilities of interaction are outlined in code, where structures evolve through a series of actions and where movements are unique elements within given parameters. Beyond his own body of work is the instrumental foundation he has laid with the creation of Processing for the growth of a new wave of software artists and design­ers.  In addition to a collection of recent works from Reas, three new pieces will be debuted at OPEN: “Network A”, “Network B” and “Surface”.

Tendorama Gallery: Camille Utterback

Camille Utterback’s interactive video piece “Liquid Time” will be the first featured work in the Tendorama Window Gallery Project, a series of rotating bi-monthly installations in the gallery’s prominent 15’ x 8’ front display windows facing Taylor Street. Utterback’s exploration is a series of pieces filmed in the surrounding neighborhood and projected back in the gallery window where the imagery of time, as well as space, is disrupted by the motions of passer-bys. This vibrant, site-specific window installation will feature video filmed in locations throughout the Tenderloin and will be viewable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by residents and visitors of the Tenderloin.

Mezzanine Gallery: Stamen Design

San Francisco-based Stamen Design will debut a series of interactive and printed pieces that allow visitors to explore the Tenderloin through a series of different maps and mappings. Using data from the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District, public data made available by the City of San Francisco’s datasf.org, and other data sets, the project will provide a unique view on this fascinating neighborhood.

The Tenderloin has many faces: National Register Historic District, entry point to San Francisco’s immigrant population, notoriously vice-ridden streets, home to diverse communities and the city’s largest population of children, seat of some of the city’s oldest architecture, the only largely working-class neighborhood within the downtown area, and birthplace of the sexual liberation movement predating the Stonewall riots. Most recently, a new wave of artistic and cultural activity (including GAFFTA) is changing the face of the neighborhood once again. Using real world geographic, demographic and cartographic data, this exhibition will offer unique perspectives and unexpected insight to this complex and dynamic nexus at the center of San Francisco’s cultural and social fabric.

Grand Opening Events