Shepard Fairey's ‘Fractured' marks first major S.F. show in nearly 20 years — and it demands your attention

San Francisco Chronicle​

7 hours ago

You know him from the 2008 Barack Obama 'Hope' poster, but Shepard Fairey has a lot more to say.
'Shepard Fairey: Fractured,' the American artist's first major San Francisco show since 2008, showcases 115 politically charged works at Harman Projects gallery at Minnesota Street Project. The collection features portraits of both well-known and anonymous figures juxtaposed with text and imagery in Fairey's signature restricted color palette. Nearly all the work is silkscreen, sometimes with mixed media, on paper, wood or aluminum.
'I've been looking for an opportunity to do something in San Francisco for a while,' Fairey told the Chronicle. 'San Francisco is my kind of town.'
Though Fairey never lived in the Bay Area, 'Fractured' is in a way a homecoming. Between 1996 and 1999, while in his 20s, Fairey estimates he visited the region at least once a month for the 'really incredible' street art and graffiti scene.
Meanwhile, street art was sparking interest in another corner of the country.
In western Massachusetts, Harman was following the growing movement, documenting his finds and sending photographs of his discoveries to the Wooster Collective, a website that documented street art. When he moved to Oakland in 2006, he said he kept up the practice of 'going out with local artists in the middle of the night while they wheat-pasted.'
Harman loved Fairey's art so much, he purchased a set of four screen prints the artist made in 2008 in collaboration with Blek Le Rat for $1,200 — despite earning about $10 an hour at the Lake Merrit Whole Foods in Oakland.
He remembers it took six months to pay off the credit card.
'When I say I was a fan, I really mean it,' said Harman, now owner of Harman Projects and Hashimoto Gallery, both of which have locations in San Francisco and New York.
'The fact that we're here 17 years later,' he mused. 'It's really an honor.'
Harman's admiration for Fairey's work only deepened when he attended the artist's 2008 exhibition, titled 'Duality of Humanity,' at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. The show focused on what Fairey called 'reverse propaganda,' infused with what he then saw as Obama's optimism and political ideals.
'At the time, I didn't have much going on creatively and I thought it was interesting that an artist I admired was doing this for a presidential nominee,' Harman, now 42, recalled.
Harman began blogging and eventually became the expert on Obama street art. For the 2009 presidential inauguration, too broke to afford a hotel room, Harman wound up sleeping on the floor of a Washington, D.C. gallery for five days. (He jokes it was a 'crash course' in gallery management.)
'Seeing my favorite artists coalesce around this candidate really very much turned me into a political person,' Harman said, referring to Fairey and other like minded artists including Date Farmers, Ron English, Emek and Ray Noland.
Harman and Fairey are hoping to inspire others in the same way in 2025.
In order to rouse people off their couches, Fairey strives to make his message as direct as possible.
One standout piece, 'Fractured Harmony,' depicts a woman looking through a torn mandala against an oil derrick, accompanied by words highlighting how oil giants are shielded from legal liability. Fairey describes it as a 'chaotic collage' that reflects the ripped social fabric of our moment.
He particularly enjoys the duality of the mandala, which could be seen as either an aspirational harmony or as an 'easy conspiracy theory that ties things up in a package.' The mandala's promise of harmony rings hollow against the reality of the destructive oil derrick. Fairy hopes people ask questions instead of accepting 'conveniently simple' explanations, which he views as harmful to democracy.
'One of the reasons democracy doesn't work as well as it should is because there is so much apathy,' said Fairey, 55. 'You can't necessarily react to or solve every problem in the moment. … But when it matters, am I going to speak out and am I going to vote?'
The exhibition also includes portraits of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, legendary pro boxer Muhammed Ali and Andy Warhol, a leading figure in the Pop Art movement beginning in the early '60s. Their images lined in rows on the wall form a phalanx of social justice camaraderie.
The work shown at Harman Projects comes at a range of price points to make sure the art is broadly accessible for purchase. A signed and dated poster in a standard 24-by-36 size for affordable framing costs $30 –– cheaper than a trendy water bottle.
Fairey and Harman, while showing in galleries, haven't abandoned the streets. Fairey noted Harman helped him find a wall, near the gallery along Indiana Street, for a new mural even though Harman will not benefit financially. He completed it in June.
'If public space is really meant for the good of the public,' said Fairey, 'then it shouldn't just be ads and commercial signage that we're looking at.'
Perhaps a visitor to Harmon Projects' will be moved to political or artistic action.
'I, of course, would never suggest that somebody should ever do anything illegal such as making a piece of street art without permission,' said Harman. 'But I certainly hope — wink wink — that this exhibition inspires artists both indoors and outdoors.'