January 10 through February 23, 2020
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and San Francisco Art Institute announce the Bay Area debut of Rashaad Newsome ’s To Be Real, an exhibition environment of collage, sculpture, and the interactive AI humanoid, Being. The exhibition presents a series of neo-Cubist portraits in expressive frames, threading an ornamental glamour through figures reflecting on agency, Blackness, and the radical futurity of emerging identities.
January 17 and 18, 2020 at 7 pm
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture and San Francisco Art Institute will present Rashaad Newsome’s immersive performance, Running. In this abstract portrait of soul, composed for light and voice, three singers explore the “vocal run”: a musicology term for a rapid series of ascending or descending musical notes, usually improvised and sung in quick succession. With the vocalists Kyron El, Aaron Marcellus, and Devin Michael from its New York City premiere Running features an original score composed by the artist, incorporating samples of vocal runs by Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, James Brown, and Kelly Price, among others.