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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
In Joel Daniel Phillips' art, featured here, the characters living in his neighborhood are brought to the center stage and become the hero of their own story. The San Francisco based artist's graphite and charcoal drawings feature people on the streets who generally go unnoticed by the public, or are virtually ignored, only to become celebrated in his monumental works. "A true portrait is far more than a rendering of physical form," he says, focusing instead on portraying the vulnerable nature that makes us human.
San Francisco's notoriously sky-high rents have made headlines in recent months, and the avant-garde mecca of yore is rapidly becoming a poster child for gentrification and income inequality. A testament to the city's rapid transformation and out-with-the-old mentality, Brian Goggin's site-specific installation "Defenestration" will be taken down from Hugo Hotel on June 3 to make way for the building's demolition this fall. Seventeen years of display time is much longer than the artist expected when he created the piece with the help of 100 volunteers in 1997. The installation became a beloved landmark for San Francisco residents and many donors, including Banksy, have contributed to preserve the work.