RON HENGGELER

September 6, 2024
What Matters: A Proposition

and

Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)

at SFMOMA

What Matters: A Proposition in Eight Rooms

This exhibition brings together an evolving body of contemporary works from the museum's collection that address questions about life and art. Presented as related episodes over time, it offers deep engagement with ideas, materials, and structures that order meaning, understanding, and purpose. This second episode includes recently acquired works by Patty Chang, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Sky Hopinka, Deana Lawson, Minouk Lim, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Oscar Murillo alongside those that remain on view from the first episode.
Several works possess lived experience as actions, document, and ritual, now juxtaposed in a conversation or web of relations to consider their philosophical underpinnings and generate new possibilities. Murillo's three canvases from for the souls of the rotten mighty (2016-23) were made in the Korean city of Anyang, the former site of a Buddhist temple. Collaborating with a local mudang, or shaman, the artist's prepared canvases were installed in the woods for months to harness the spiritual power of the land.
Hopinka's elegiac video I'll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You'll Become (2016) offers a new mythology for reincarnation and presence among the living. During months of government-dictated isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lim attached drops of liquid adhesive to strands of fishing line for Discreetly (2021), eventually forming a nearly invisible wall of tears that allowed the artist to process loss and transformation for herself and the world. Made of found materials gathered over thirty years, Cruzvillegas's Rastrojo (2021) conceives the life of objects as regenerating in a cyclical way, nourished by and strengthening the environment. The circular rings of the sculpture constitute a kind of Venn diagram that enables new meanings-a fertile framing for this episode of the exhibition. These are quiet works, which individually propose celebration, mourning, and transcen-dence. Together, they initiate a stimulating composition about life and freedom.

The exhibition is co-curated by Eungie Joo, Curator and Head of Contemporary Art, and Rudolf Frieling, Curator and Head of Media Arts, with Alison Guh, Curatorial Associate, Contemporary Art, and Karen Cheung, Curatorial Associate, Media Arts.

Disease Thrower #15
2021
Gong, steel, wood, cotton, glue mixture, plastic, loofah, and objects collected from a ritual retracing of the artist's original migration route
Accessions Committee Fund purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams, 2023
Maravilla-an artist, activist, and healer-creates sculptures and installations that address disease, migration, survival, and healing. The sculpture's title conjures the strength of a god with the power to expel sickness, trauma, and evil. The work is part of a series of sculptures that incorporate diverse objects Maravilla collected while retracing the migration route he followed from El Salvador to the United States in the 1980s as an unaccompanied child. Disease Thrower #15 is activated by the artist and a group of healers through ritual sound baths, imbuing the sculpture with regenerative force and potency.

by Guadalupe Maravilla
Born 1976, San Salvador, El Salvador; based in New York
New to the Collection

Detail of: Disease Thrower #15
2021

by Guadalupe Maravilla

Detail of: Disease Thrower #15
2021

by Guadalupe Maravilla

Detail of: Disease Thrower #15
2021

by Guadalupe Maravilla

Disease Thrower #15
2021

by Guadalupe Maravilla

. . . three kings weep . . .
2018
Three-channel digital video projection with sound,
8:34 min., and custom vinyl wallpaper Shawn and Brook Byers Fund for Women Artists, 2022
...three kings weep... emerges from Patterson's ongoing research into dress as a way of performing dignity. Reversed tears flow up the three men's faces as they clothe and adorn their bodies, armoring and exalting themselves. The video is punctuated by the voice of a teenage boy reciting Claude McKay's "If We Must Die," penned following killings of African Americans across the US during the Red Summer of 1919. The poem calls for resistance, asserting dignity and self-determination even in the face of racism and violence. Projected on a monumental scale, ...three kings weep... forms a reverent chapel in which to confront and be confronted by humanity.

by Ebony G. Patterson
Born 1981, Kingston, Jamaica; based in Chicago and Kingston, Jamaica
New to the Collection.

. . . three kings weep . . .
2018

by Ebony G. Patterson

. . . three kings weep . . .
2018

by Ebony G. Patterson

. . . three kings weep . . .
2018

by Ebony G. Patterson

Black Towers/Black Power

2020
Models: high-density foam, redwood, and paint Section drawings: printed ink on acrylic Monoprints: gouache, ink, colored pencil, and watercolor on paper
Map: digitized Sanborn map printed on vinyl Single-channel video, with sound, 8 min., in collaboration with J. Hood

In this work Hood envisions a stretch of Oakland's San Pablo Avenue had the Ten-Point Program developed by the Black Panther Party (BPP), which was headquartered there in the 1960s, been realized. As Hood explains, the Program suggests "We should be self-sufficient, let's have housing, let's take care of our community, let's stop capitalist theft, let's think about education, food, the economy, and who's in control of those things." The ten proposed skyscrapers, flanking a tree-lined central promenade that celebrates BPP activists such as Angela Davis and Huey P. Newton, take their forms from objects designed or patented by Black inventors.
The corresponding section drawings outline the intended residential, financial, educational, and cultural uses of these Black-owned spaces.
Rendering the BPP's ideals for the first time as a fully realized city, Hood suggests "maybe it's possible to re-imagine ourselves in new places and then find ways to get there."

By: Walter J. Hood
Born 1958, Charlotte, North Carolina; lives and works in Oakland
New to the Collection

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Black Towers/Black Power

by Walter J. Hood

Chief

2019
Inkjet print in mirrored frame

by Deana Lawson
Born 1979, Rochester, New York; based in Brooklyn

An Ode to Yemaya
2019
Inkjet print in mirrored frame

by Deana Lawson
Born 1979, Rochester, New York; based in Brooklyn

Latifah's Wedding
2020
Inkjet print in mirrored frame

Lawson's photographs explore the body's ability to channel personal and social histories. Borrowing from visual traditions such as portraiture and documentary photography, she delves into the materiality of Black culture. She stages her images carefully, meticulously selecting each site and sitter. In Latifah's Wedding, dollar bills pinned to the couple's clothing speak to ritual and celebration throughout the African diaspora. Possibly situated in a church basement, the newlyweds are framed by a floating cable and a modest tray with disposable tableware while the bride gazes firmly at the camera. The photograph's mirrored frame implicates the viewer in this work and others nearby.

by Deana Lawson
Born 1979, Rochester, New York; based in Brooklyn
New to the Collection

An Ode to Yemaya
2019

by Deana Lawson

Latifah's Wedding
2020

by Deana Lawson

for the souls of the rotten mighty
2016-23
Oil on canvas and linen, copper wire, and shaman's thread

A central part of his practice, Murillo's sewn-canvas works are a flexible medium to experiment with strategies that contextualize disparate environ-ments. As part of the 5th Anyang Public Art Project in 2016, the artist brought five black canvases to Korea. There, he worked with a local seamstress to cut, weave, and patch them together and with mudang Kim Ju Young to expose each to gut, or shamanistic rituals. The anointed canvases were then hung in the woods of the sacred Samseong Mountain, exposed to the elements and the changing seasons. Three of the canvases now hang here, sharing their energy with a new public.

by Oscar Murillo
Born 1986, La Paila, Colombia; based in London
New to the Collection

Detail of: for the souls of the rotten mighty
2016-23

by Oscar Murillo

Rastrojo
2021
Stainless steel, iron, sea sponge, latex, nylon, rubber, leather, clay pots, vegetable fiber, plastic, wood, acetate, rawhide, acrylic paint, cardboard, stone, lambskin, fiberglass, animal fiber, and corn
Accessions Committee Fund purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Michael D. Abrams, 2022
Much of Cruzvillegas's work is informed by auto-construcción, a concept he derived from the collaborative and resourceful methods of building homes from found objects implemented in his childhood neighborhood, Ajusco. These principles underpin Rastrojo, assembled from elements of the artist's past projects. Hung from a trio of overlapping hoops, the sculptural components suggest a Venn diagram under which disparate objects and lives intersect to produce new meanings and contexts. Rastrojo, or "stubble," calls to mind fresh growth, a generative space to cultivate new ways of relating to art and one another. This work will periodically be activated by formal and impromptu performers at the artist's invitation.

by Abraham Cruzvillegas
Born 1968, Mexico City; based in Mexico City
New to the Collection

Detail of: Rastrojo
2021

by Abraham Cruzvillegas

Detail of: Rastrojo
2021

by Abraham Cruzvillegas

Detail of: Rastrojo
2021

by Abraham Cruzvillegas

Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)

A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler.
Featuring a Rite of Ancient Intelligence
Carried out by The Gardeners
Toward the Continued Improvement of the Human Specious
by Kara E-Walker

Kara Walker has long been recognized for her incisive examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality. Her work leverages expressions of fantasy and humor to confront troubling histories and dominant narratives, repossessing control in the process.

Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)

A Respite for the Weary Time-Traveler.
Featuring a Rite of Ancient Intelligence
Carried out by The Gardeners
Toward the Continued Improvement of the Human Specious
by Kara E-Walker

Inspired by a wide range of sources, from antique dolls to Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, Walker’s new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), considers the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society.

from SFMOMA

Here, automatons trapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle are repositories of the human soul. They recall mechanized medieval icons that evidenced divinity, vitality, and the promise of faith. Situated within an energetically charged field of black obsidian from Mt. Konocti in Lake County — a volcanic glass with deep spiritual properties — Walker’s Gardeners evoke wonder, reflection, respite, and hope.

from SFMOMA

Kara Walker

About Kara Walker

Kara Walker

The installation’s namesake, Fortuna, responds to each visitor with a choreographed gesture and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth — an offering of absolution and contemplation.

from SFMOMA

The installation’s namesake, Fortuna, responds to each visitor with a choreographed gesture and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth — an offering of absolution and contemplation.

from SFMOMA