Installation view.  Courtesy of Kadist.

Installation view. Courtesy of Kadist.

City of Disappearances, Enrique Metinides, Untitled p 64, 1990. Courtesy of the Wattis.

City of Disappearances, Enrique Metinides, Untitled p 64, 1990. Courtesy of the Wattis.

 

Currently on view at The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco is the group exhibition “City of Disappearances“. The exhibition imagines a transposition and exchange of the living-imaginary of London conjured in Sinclair’s book with the fictions and myths of San Francisco. This conceptual and metaphorical exchange will be followed by a real one as the exhibition travels to London in 2014, where it will be renamed “Infinite City” after Rebecca Solnit’s almanac of San Francisco. “City of Disappearances” is curated by Joseph Del Pesco of the Kadist Art Foundation and Elizabeth Neilson of the Zabludowicz Collection.

 

In a city with a transient population, like San Francisco, it’s uncommon to meet someone who has lived here since birth. Populated by foreigners passing through, high-tech commuters, and more dogs than children, the percentage of home-owners is well below the national average. Yet despite an ability to identify such tendencies, cities like San Francisco (or London) remain unstable and elusive, subject to physical as well as ideological shifts and disappearances—whether sudden and violent like an earthquake or gradual like the fading of a memory.

 

“City of Disappearances is on view through December 14th, 2013.

 

For more information on “City of Disappearances” visit The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco.