Eight bridges connect the San Francisco Bay, so it is an apt name for a gallery platform that brings the Bay Area art world together.

Our mission is to maintain a vibrant gallery scene, despite restrictions on travel, celebrations and other larger gatherings. We want to support our artists by informing and entertaining curators, collectors and critics with potent online exhibitions of their work.

On the first Thursday of every month, we will launch 8 shows of artists relevant to the Bay Area. They may be working in this place, long considered an epicenter of change, or deeply engaged in the conversations the Bay Area holds dear, whether it’s related to technology, the environment, social justice or sexual identity, to name a few. In addition, each month will highlight the crucial work of a Bay Area non-profit arts organization.

Founding Committee

Claudia Altman-Siegel, Kelly Huang, Sophia Kinell, Micki Meng, Daphne Palmer, Ratio 3, Sarah Wendell Sherrill, Jessica Silverman, and Elizabeth Sullivan

Ambassador Committee

Sayre Batton & Maja Thomas, Joachim & Nancy Bechtle, Matt Bernstein, Sabrina Buell, Wayee Chu & Ethan Beard, Natasha Boas, Douglas Durkin, Carla Emil, Matt & Jessica Farron, Lauren Ford, Ali Gass, Stanlee Gatti, Brook Hartzell & Tad Freese, Pamela & David Hornik, Katie & Matt Paige, Putter Pence, Becca Prowda & Daniel Lurie, Deborah Rappaport, Komal Shah & Gaurav Garg, Laura Sweeney, The Battery, Robin Wright, Sonya Yu & Zack Lara

Sponsors

Lobus, The Space Program

Haines Gallery
Kota Ezawa
What We Build

Haines Gallery presents a selection of works by the Oakland-based artist Kota Ezawa, whose practice draws from our collective repository of images to examine potent moments in our shared cultural history. Comprising photography, animation, and sculpture, this multimedia offering spans two decades of the artist’s work to explore ideas of peace in our political sphere.

From the representation of a democratic voting process in its simplest form in the sculpture Handvote, to the ceremonial transition of power between US Presidents in the animated Take Off, the selected works in Kota Ezawa: What We Build are especially resonant during this unprecedented era in US politics—one marked by voter suppression, false claims of election fraud, and dangerous breaches of democracy. Viewed together, the works are a meditation on peace, diplomacy, and shared responsibility. The presentation’s title is drawn from former President Barack Obama’s 2016 speech at the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park, an entreaty to “define our nations not by our capacity to destroy, but by what we build.”

In conjunction with 4×8-bridges, Haines Gallery is streaming one of Ezawa’s seminal animations, Lennon Sontag Beuys, in its entirety online from January 25 to 31. Click here to learn more.

Kota Ezawa
Handvote, 2008
Plywood, enamel paint
11.25 x 17 x 5.75 inches
AP (from an edition of 3)
$10,000

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Kota Ezawa
Handvote, 2008
Plywood, enamel paint
11.25 x 17 x 5.75 inches
AP (from an edition of 3)
$10,000

Handvote is a multi-layered plywood sculpture depicting a group of figures with their hands raised in unison. Drawn from a stock photograph—which the artist found on an online encyclopedia entry for “policy-making process”—the work is deliberately generalized, with Ezawa’s trademark simplified representation of unidentified figures voting in an unspecified event. Yet, the simple gesture of a raised hand signifies a universal icon of democracy: the vote. Handvote represents the oldest and most direct form of democracy, and the fundamental mechanics of this process.



A larger version of this work was originally commissioned for an exhibition at the New School entitled Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding (2008-2009), and later constructed as a monumental outdoor tableau for the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012).

Kota Ezawa
Visit to Hiroshima, 2020
Duratrans transparency and lightbox
Lightbox: 30.5 x 45.5 x 3 inches
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
$16,000

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Kota Ezawa
Visit to Hiroshima, 2020
Duratrans transparency and lightbox
Lightbox: 30.5 x 45.5 x 3 inches
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
$16,000

Ezawa's latest lightbox, Visit to Hiroshima recreates a scene from former President Barack Obama's 2016 visit to the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. President Obama was the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima since the city’s devastation during World War II, a historic gesture with profound diplomatic implications. Here, Obama and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are seen paying their respects at the Cenotaph for the Atomic Bomb Victims, a memorial to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The two are seen from behind in this still, somber image, their figures dwarfed by the Cenotaph and the monumentality of the event.



Visit to Hiroshima is part of Ezawa’s latest body of work, Eternal Return, which examines parallel events that occur across time, a reference to the idea that historic events—often tragic—have a way of repeating themselves. Yet, as President Obama reminds us in a powerful speech, such catastrophes need not recur. Instead, they can serve as catalysts in our quest for a more peaceful coexistence on this planet.

Kota Ezawa
Take Off, 2013
Single-channel video (color, sound)
2:40 minutes, looped
Edition of 7
$10,000

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Kota Ezawa
Take Off, 2013
Single-channel video (color, sound)
2:40 minutes, looped
Edition of 7
$10,000

Take Off is a watercolor-based rotoscope-style animation depicting the peaceful transfer of power between former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Based on C-SPAN news footage from January 20, 2009, a television feed shows President and Mrs. Bush boarding the Marine One helicopter, as President and Mrs. Obama and Vice President and Mrs. Biden look on. Leaving the White House, the helicopter quietly fades into the distance of a Washington, D.C skyline, above a scene of pedestrians going about their day.



Take Off is an unsentimental representation of a monumental event—the beginning of new administration, new policies, the first Black US President and what his election signified—translated into vibrant color through Ezawa’s animation process.

Kota Ezawa
Modernist Folksong, 2017
Duratrans transparency and lightbox
Lightbox: 30.5 x 30.5 x 3 inches
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
$14,000

INQUIRE

Kota Ezawa
Modernist Folksong, 2017
Duratrans transparency and lightbox
Lightbox: 30.5 x 30.5 x 3 inches
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
$14,000

Ezawa's lightbox Modernist Folksong superimposes an iconic portrait of folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, taken by Jack Robinson in 1969, onto an abstract composition from Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square. The work stages a luminous meeting of two revolutionary figures: Albers, whose radical color theory influenced a generation of modern artists; and Mitchell, who has long been engaged and associated with anti-war and environmental movements.
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