48 Pillars - SF Art Fair pdf

Arc Gallery at the San Francisco Art Fair
April 16-19, 2026

For this year's Art Fair, we have asked a dozen artists to make "pillars", mostly diptychs, all in the identical 48" x 12" footprint. This is inspired by our annual exhibition at Arc Gallery which just closed last month at the gallery. We are also showing a few sculptural pieces by Rebecca Fox - an artist who has shown in all of our major exhibitions. All of the artists chosen have exhibited in previous 48 Pillars exhibitions at Arc.

48 Pillars was inspired by a chance encounter at Flax with a close-out sale of deep
vertical panels, 48” x 12” x 1 5/8”. 24 local Bay Area artists produce two pieces each
on these identically-sized panels that will exactly ring the gallery – 48 works total. This is
first time that Arc Gallery, founded in 2010, has participated in an art fair. For our booth,
we are bringing twelve of our favorite 48 Pillars artists from the nearly 200 local Bay Area
artist that we have shown in this exhibition since 2018.

Along with our iconic FourSquared exhibition, this is essentially an exercise in "structural constraint". For both exhibitions, the artists are unconstrained in subject matter, except to the extent that works need to be a series; but they are constrained in format. One might expect that constraining format would constrain creativity. Our experience has been the
opposite - creativity has been unleashed. The results have been visually stunning.

Michael Yochum, Curator