On the evening of March 6, 2009 over 4,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area came to experience the Warhol phenomena through art, music, food and community, validating the Warhol prophecy in a double entendré of spectacle, reproduction and persona.

An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he – for some reason – thinks it would be a good idea to give them.                      ~Andy Warhol

With oh, Maybe… OFFspace investigated key methodologies of Warhol’s practice, specifically reproduction, persona and spectacle; artists were chosen based on their ability to contemporize and expand upon these methodologies while the exhibition as a whole poses the questions; what might Warhol’s practice look like were he alive today? How might he have approached the explosion and accessibility of media? … Read More »

Altered

Since our inception in 2007, OFFspace has staged a dozen exhibitions in unexpected spaces and host galleries. Featuring the work of over 100 artists from across the United States, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Besides being pioneers of site specific curation in the Bay Area, OFFspace has singled itself out by creating shows with an wide range of artists and practices; bringing together emerging, mid-career and established artists, Bay Area and international art makers, as well as diverse genders and races.

To celebrate passing the 10-year mark OFFSpace proudly hosted Altered, a show part retrospective and part curatorial experiment. Altered evolved throughout the run being “re-curated” weekly by OFFSpace and invited partner curators, featuring a different theme and works with each iteration.

Over thirty artists who have shown with OFFspace throughout our 10+-year career will share work to create a physical library in one … Read More »

Featuring the work of Claudia Huenchuleo, Derek Cracco, Gillian O’Shea, Marie-Pier Frigon, Nina Wright, Victor Barbieri, Walter Aprile and Winnie van der Rijn

Inspired by the coyly adventurous calendar girl hanging on repair shop walls, we have brought together artists who explore representations and notions of femininity, feminism and gendered identity. Notions of whom or what is “ideal” are shifting along with standards of masculinity and the resultant imagery.

In an effort to embody the current debate in this charged landscape OFFspace presents “Pin Up!” with work alluding to, defying and epitomizing the new/post/disrupted ideal. Taking on fascination with weaponized sexuality, cheeky twists on the traditional supine, passive nude and the “candid” snapshot artists bring an array of views and perspectives to challenge and celebrate the idealized (fe)male form.

Gillian O’Shea re-examines the time-honored trope of the watercolor nude, her paintings are lush … Read More »

OFFSpace’s inaugural exhibition at Art Engine Gallery in San Francisco, CA featured three artists playing with dolls- making them, becoming them or just watching them.

Sara Harrell-Lai, Victor Barbieri, and Goody-B. Wiseman  explored the margins of this childish pre-occupation exhibit works both playful and alarming.

Victor Barbieri’s ultra slow motion videos of young girls sleeping capture in vivid detail the childish, doll-like perfection embodied in his passive subjects. Visceral and engrossing, innocent and disturbing, these pieces elicit strong reactions. The subversive power of these gorgeous images puts a twist on the age-old relationship between the artist/viewer and the model/subject. Derived from her museum of a fictitious colony of feral children, Pentegoet Park: The Terrible Ones, Goody-B. Wiseman’s small bronze sculptures conjure dark places we’d rather not acknowledge—The Beastly Baby meets Aesop’s Fables. The museum of feral children documents the terrifying voyage of … Read More »