![]() ![]() And, surrounding all this, there’s a smattering of art by bold-faced names, which summons an aura of sobriety. As with most fairs, there’s at least one grabby interactive installation, in this case Oakland-based “socio-commodity engineer” Nick Dong’s En-lightening, a chamber, lined with handmade ceramic tiles, that lights up and immerses a visitor in billowing sound when he sits within. There is a lot of comic book imagery-the best of which, for me, is Icelandic artist Erró’s cool Peter, how did it go? at Galerie Ernst Hilger, from Austria-but that is almost a contemporary art cliché. There are a few more Apple logos and tech references in the art-but these are omnipresent symbols in the culture right now, and you’d probably find them anywhere. (Another parallel: Silicon Valley Contemporary had the Marina Abramović Institute’s “ interactive neurofeedback installation”).īut for now, really, the Art Silicon Valley formula looks a lot like a normal art fair. (As a parallel, back in April, Silicon Valley Contemporary featured KATSU’s drone-powered street art experiments at The Hole.)Īnd of course everyone thinks riffs on tech culture are a good idea, though I have my doubts about this: On Thursday night, San Jose-based John Slepian was doing a performance (presented by ZER01), for which he sat on a mechanical platform wearing a “hacked brainwave sensor,” his thoughts raising and lowering him in the air. Perhaps “street art”-media-savvy, unpretentious, with a rebellious pose-might be a thing for Silicon Valley types: Keszler Gallery has a booth full of luscious Banksys, actual framed hunks of walls ripped from his NYC “residency” last year. There are already some nebulous stereotypes developing. Still, international contemporary art galleries in the top tier are notably sitting out the “Silicon Valley Challenge,” waiting, maybe, for someone else to figure out the formula. ![]() “It’s the international program that’s key,” he stressed to me in the hangar-like convention center space on opening night, adding, “We bring the best of the world to them.”Īrt Silicon Valley director Nick Korniloff, with Melody and George Lucas, and Art Miami head of VIP relations Pamela Cohen Nick Korniloff, of the Art Miami fairs franchise, has gathered an admirably diverse roster of galleries for his new endeavor. The very nature of the new Silicon Valley fairs-planting a flag on the tech millionaire’s doorstep rather than waiting around for said tech millionaire to seek out art-indicates that a new taste has to be cultivated, which will take time (though there is a small core of serious collectors in San Francisco and rumors swirled Thursday night that George Lucas had passed through). In truth, they are questions not likely to be answered this weekend, or even soon. Can the coveted wunderkind demographic be coaxed to spend a tiny fraction of its new riches on old-fashioned high-end wall decorations? Can the relatively low-key decadence of the art fair scene compete with the start-up scene’s more conventional diversions of mechanical bulls and live tigers? Can techies be coaxed by the promise of $20 glasses of Ruinart away from the Googleplex, where they get free snacks? These are the question everyone is asking. ![]() It is the second fair to land in the area this year, after Silicon Valley Contemporary in April. It is blessed, however, with a geographic position between money-clotted San Francisco and the boomtown outlands of Silicon Valley, and so it is here that the inaugural Art Silicon Valley/San Francisco touched down Thursday night, at the San Mateo Event Center. ![]() San Mateo is a homely little burg, characterized mainly by boxy office parks and chain restaurants. ![]()
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