Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art (SFMOMA), present San Francisco Bay Area artist Kota Ezawa’s new exhibition for Fort Mason Art’s annual Gallery 308 program. The exhibition is a deep dive into San Francisco’s collective memory, transforming recent Bay Area history into immersive art.

Featuring two major video works and a captivating installation with photographic evidence of a legendary but lost art environment, the show highlights Ezawa’s ability to blend historical events with contemporary art practices. Here and There — Now and Then is the second exhibition collaboration between FMCAC and SFMOMA since their 2015 co-presentation of Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet in FMCAC’s Gallery 308.

Exhibition Details:
On view: January 11, 2025 through March 9, 2025
Open: Wednesday to Saturday, 12:00 p.m. (Noon) to 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Gallery 308, Landmark Building A
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11, 2025, 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Free Admission

The site-specific exhibition Here and There —­ Now and Then includes Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021), and Ursonate (2022), which SFMOMA recently acquired for its permanent collection, along with Grand Princess (2024) and nine other Ezawa works. Here and There —­ Now and Then incorporates FMCAC’s physical location on San Francisco’s northern waterfront — where the Grand Princess sailed and a stone’s throw from Alcatraz Island — and explores its transformation from a military base to an artistic and cultural hub. “Ezawa’s work perfectly captures the spirit of Fort Mason Center. It is about repurposing spaces and ideas, finding new meaning in our history,” said Mike Buhler, CEO of FMCAC. “And with this new exhibition, we are delighted to again work with SFMOMA on presenting poignant artwork that takes inspiration from this particular place.”

“San Franciscans have lived through extraordinary times – financial boom and bust cycles, wars, global pandemics, cultural upheavals, and struggles for human rights and freedom,” said Frank Smigiel, Director of Arts Programming and Partnerships at FMCAC. “Ezawa’s work doesn’t just remind us of these moments; it invites us to see them anew, finding unexpected connections between crisis and creativity, between our past and our possible futures.”

A fully illustrated catalog, featuring contributions from local writers and curators Dodie Bellamy, Rudolf Frieling, and Julian Brave NoiseCat, with an introduction by Frank Smigiel, will be released on the closing weekend. “Ezawa can render and reshape the memory of historic and recent shared experiences into icons of resistance,” said Rudolf Frieling, Curator and Head of Media Arts at SFMOMA. “Over 20 years, Ezawa’s work across all media exemplifies why San Francisco remains at the forefront of new practices in art.”

“We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture to showcase Kota Ezawa’s timely and thought-provoking work. Fostering meaningful relationships with organizations in our community by developing highly relevant exhibitions and programs is one of SFMOMA’s ongoing institutional priorities,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “We look forward to sharing this important selection of Ezawa works with a wide range of visitors at Fort Mason Center.”

In Grand Princess (2024), Ezawa reframes the COVID-wracked ship’s progress to the Port of Oakland and quarantine as a movie playing at Fort Mason FLIX, FMCAC’s pandemic-era pop-up drive-in movie theater. In this work, the artist commissions a cover of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” by The Red Room Orchestra featuring Petra Haden, underscoring this now-historical moment’s many tones of anxiety, grief, and dread.

Ideas of resistance and remembrance play out in Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), a collaboration with writer and activist Julian Brave NoiseCat, highlighting scenes from 2019’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day Alcatraz Canoe Journey. This traditional canoe gathering invited Indigenous peoples from across the West Coast and beyond to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island by Indians of All Tribes.

The exhibition also includes Merzbau 1, 2, 3, a remaking of three photographs documenting German artist Kurt Schwitters’ home studio installation known as the Merzbau (1923-37): an accumulating artistic environment abandoned when the artist fled to Oslo after his work had been included in the Nazi’s 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition. Destroyed by Allied air raids in 1943, Wilhelm Redemann’s photographs gave Schwitters’ Merzbau an ongoing afterlife as a precursor to postwar and contemporary installation art. Here, Ezawa continues this process and digitally reproduces these documents of Schwitters’ lost world in a room installation including three light-boxes, wallpaper, plus a video recreation of Schwitter’s sound poem, Ursonate (2022).”

Other Ezawa Works On View
Ezawa’s National Anthem (2018/2024) — a single-channel video and vinyl wallpaper — is featured in Count Me In, one of seven related presentations inspired by sports currently at SFMOMA. Presented on the museum’s second floor, Count Me In together with an adjacent exhibition entitled When the World Is Watching (both on view August 17, 2024–May 4, 2025) highlight how international competitions — such as the Olympic Games, Paralympic Games, the America’s Cup, World Cup, and the Gay Games — together with wider participation in sports by Indigenous, Black, disabled, and women athletes, mirror important societal conversations globally. National Anthem is a tribute to San Francisco 49ers then-quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 in silent protest of racial inequality and injustice — on and off the football field.

Fraenkel Gallery: Beginning October 23 through December 21, 2024, Fraenkel Gallery exhibits several new Ezawa works, including a digital animation and related print on wood that depict then-California Senator Kamala Harris questioning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; Hand Vote, an 8-foot sculpture celebrating the practice of democracy; and two recent light-boxes portraying the early-COVID-era arrival of the Grand Princess cruise ship under the Golden Gate Bridge in 2020.

Catalog Description: A fully illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition, with texts from writer Dodie Bellamy; curator Rudolf Freiling; activist and writer Julian Brave NoiseCat; and an introduction from Frank Smigiel. This FMCAC book is edited by Fort Mason Art’s Marijane Kubow and designed by McCall Associates. It will be released on March 8, 2025, during the closing weekend of the show.

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About the Artist – Kota Ezawa (b. 1969 Cologne, Germany) is best known for his light-boxes, works on paper, and animations that make use of found images, video, and film to comment on contemporary culture, appropriation, and historical events. Described by the artist himself as “moving paintings,” Ezawa’s works serve as conduits of historical and pop culture events, translating them into personal memories and experiences. His works can transcend the specificity of the image into a more universal realm by reducing the forms and content to their most basic elements. Long interested in the cultural weight of photography, Ezawa questions the medium’s validity as a mediator of actual events and experiences by reducing complex visual information to its most essential, two-dimensional elements. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the San Francisco Art Institute before getting his MFA from Stanford University. He lives and works in Oakland, California.

Ezawa has received several fellowships, awards, grants, and residencies; including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2003, a SECA Art Award in 2006, and a Eureka Fellowship in 2010. In 2019, Ezawa’s work was included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has also been included in solo and group exhibitions at the Everson Museum of Art, NY (2023); Manetti Shrem Museum, Davis, CA (2022); Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI (2021); University of Texas, Austin, TX (2021); The Georgia Museum of Art, GA (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2020); Southbank Centre, UK (2020); Margulies Collection (2020); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2020); Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL (2019); Jewish Museum, NY (2019); Galerie der Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Germany (2018); SITE Santa Fe, NM (2017); Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Spain (2017); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany (2015); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2015); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Buffalo AKG Art Museum, NY (2013); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2012); Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2012); and the St. Louis Art Museum (2008), among others.

About FMCAC: Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) is a decommissioned military installation converted into a nonprofit cultural center. FMCAC hosts a lively mix of arts, educational, and cultural programming. Each year FMCAC provides more than $2 million in support to local arts organizations, enabling groups to produce diverse and innovative artworks at the historic waterfront campus. The exhibition is part of FMCAC’s signature Gallery 308 exhibition series, which presents leading contemporary artists, including Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Joan Jonas, Sir Isaac Julien, Sunny A. Smith, and the late Bonnie Ora Sherk.

About SFMOMA: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and a thriving cultural center for the Bay Area. Its remarkable collection of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts is housed in a LEED Gold-certified building designed by the global architects Snøhetta and Mario Botta. In addition to seven gallery floors, SFMOMA offers more than 45,000 square feet of free, art-filled public space open to all.

Free Admission

Image Information: Number 1 to 3: Grand Princess (2024); Number 4: Merzbau (2021); and Number 5: Alcatraz Is An Idea (2024) by Kota Ezawa