TUCKER NICHOLS

Temporary Storage Overflow Plan Option 3

Hallway Project: January 9 - March 27, 2010

Reception: Saturday, February 20, 4-7pm

Nothing is too big or too small for the inquiring mind of Tucker Nichols, a Bay Area artist who has mastered tongue and cheek interventions in both public and private settings. For Temporary Storage Overflow Plan Option 3, Nichols is bringing his witty visual vocabulary into the gallery's entry hallway, which is conveniently shared by SFMOMA staff offices. Nichols' observations are presented as an imagined emergency storage plan for the museum, made from tape and pencil directly on the wall. The resulting structures resemble a mash-up of storage shelves, imagined buildings, offshore drilling platforms and intricate display cases. The wall drawings are currently underway and open to the public. A suite of related drawings will accompany the project.

Nichols has done several commissioned wall drawings for a range of institutions, including the de Young Museum, the Brattleboro Museum, Yves Behar's fuseproject studios, the Bravo TV corporate offices, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. For this most recent exercise, Nichols has been investigating the workings of SFMOMA as a visitor, as well as through conversations and tours of its storage facilities with staff members. Taken as a whole, TSOP #3 raises questions about how museums operate, what purposes they serve, how they think about storage, and ultimately, the nature of art itself.

This is an exciting, tumultuous time for SFMOMA. Special exhibitions related to the museum's 75th anniversary celebration are underway and the recent acquisition of the Fisher family's enormous collection of contemporary art suddenly requires an expanded floorplan. Perhaps the humble efforts of Nichols' creative case study will somehow help make sense of it all.

 Tucker Nichols has had recent solo shows at ZieherSmith Gallery in New York, Gallery 16 in San Francisco and the Kunstpanorama in Luzern, Switzerland. His work has been featured at the Drawing Center, John Connelly Presents in New York and Rocket Gallery in Tokyo. His drawings have been published in McSweeney's, J&L Books, The Thing and the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. This spring he will be in residence in the Project Space at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

all images:

Tucker Nichols, Temporary Storage Overflow Plan Option 3, 2010

Site specific installation at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, Hallway Project Space

(All images in progress)