Tacita Dean

Artist lecture Thursday, March 21, 2019 7PM
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Floor 1, Phyllis Wattis Theater, 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103
Tacita Dean, FILM, 2011. Installation view from the Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London.

One of the most significant British artists of her generation, Tacita Dean creates photographs, films, and drawings exploring themes of chance, narrative, and time. Her longstanding interest in film and portraiture has led her to create complex, captivating portraits using 16mm film. As she states, “the whole point about film is it is full of constraints. It forces you to make work in a different way.” Dean describes the process of making a film as a series of “magical transformations.”

In 2011, her battle to save film from obsolescence was manifested in a celebrated commission at Tate Modern. Projected at the end of the Turbine Hall, FILM presented a cascade of images shot in studio on 35mm film that were collaged in-camera via a complex masking system; for Dean, the final work is a “portrait of film itself.”

Dean lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She attended the Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall, England, the Supreme School of Fine Art in Athens, Greece, and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has received numerous awards including the BT New Contemporaries Award; the DAAD scholarship in Berlin; the Benesse Prize at the 51st Venice Biennale; the Hugo Boss Prize at the Guggenheim Museum; and the Kurt Schwitters Prize.

She has exhibited widely and participated in three Venice Biennales as well as Documenta 13 in Kassel. Dean’s works are held in public collections worldwide including the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid; and Tate Modern, London.


Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to present the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Each year, the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings six photographers, writers, and curators to San Francisco to offer free and open lectures, and to work one-on-one with students at California College of the Arts.


Larry Sultan Photography Award


Jonathan Calm, Double Vision (Recording I), 2018

Jonathan Calm

Fall 2019 Residency
Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA

Click HERE for more information on the Larry Sultan Photography Award

Jonathan Calm is a visual artist who works in photography, video, installation, and performance. A central theme of his work is the relationship between photography and urban architecture, and the powerful role of images in the way architectural constructs shape the lives of individuals and communities.

In his most recent work, Calm explores the complex representation of African-American automobility from a historical and contemporary perspective, focusing and drawing on the importance and resonance of the Negro Motorist Green Book. Of this project, he explains, “the image of the infinite highway and the unbridled freedom to roam the land has always been considered a quintessential expression of the modern American spirit, but the black American experience of travel, which involves heightened subjectivity and exposure, has to this day proven a precarious privilege rather than an inalienable right.”

Calm’s art practice is international in scope and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Frequency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); Role Play at the Tate Britain (2006); Black Is, Black Ain’t at the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society (2008); Streetwise at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid (2008) and the Chelsea Art Museum (2011); deCordova Biennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (2013); and Rooted Movements at LMAKprojects in New York City (2014). Calm currently lives in Palo Alto, CA where he is a faculty member in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University.