Please join us for a conversation between curator Zully Adler, Bob Conway, manager of the Conner Family Trust, and artist Lordy Rodriguez.
San Francisco’s Bruce Conner is one of the most important artists of the late 20th Century—pioneering art-making in sculpture, drawing, photography, collage and video. In Wayfinding, Hosfelt Gallery brings together a group of exquisite drawings made with magic marker between 1963 and 1975 that follow just one of Conner’s many aesthetic and conceptual paths.
Drawing was always a central part of Conner’s more than 50-year practice, but the 1963 introduction of the Pentel felt-tip watercolor marker was a game changer. Instead of constantly re-filling the nib with ink, the “magic” marker enabled him to draw a continuous line without lifting pen from paper. At first this led to frenetic, hatch-like marks which both define and veil representational images. By 1965, Conner developed an automatic drawing technique that could be used wherever he was. This method of working involved a combination of curving, straight and zig-zagging lines that never intersected and were so tightly packed the negative space between them was often narrower than the lines themselves. The negative/positive play between the black lines/white spaces creates an optical flicker comparable to the retinal effects Conner contemporaneously explored in his films.
Zully Adler is the Director of Further Triennial, which will debut across the greater Bay Area in the spring of 2027. His projects focus on modern art and counterculture in California.
Robert Conway has managed the Conner Family Trust since 2009. In that capacity he has overseen major exhibitions including Bruce Conner: It’s All True presented at SFMOMA, New York's MoMA, and Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Lordy Rodriguez is a contemporary Bay Area artist who makes drawings that reimagine cartography to explore contemporary social issues.
Hosfelt Gallery 260 Utah Street, San Francisco
Thursday, January 9, from 5–7 pm. Talk begins at 5:45.
