By Jennifer Maerz
I love a press release that starts by talking about how much an artist is “hated.” Ever Gold Gallery, which represents native San Franciscan and visual provocateur Sandy Kim, makes no bones about the fact that Sandy likes to rile people up with her work. Her candid, sexual shots of the band Girls, of her girl friends, and of general cool kids in various states of doing cool things, generates plenty of scowls from people not into her eroticized urban aesthetic.
Or, as Ever Gold puts it in the press release for her solo show there this month, “Sandy Kim is one of those artists who gets a lot of hate on the internet … Sometimes these rants reveal rage fueled by a rather boring sadness: ‘I hate Sandy Kim, and sure, maybe it’s just because I want to be famous for taking photos of me having period-blood sex with my hot musician boyfriend.’”
But, like Terry Richardson and Ryan McGinley (who also has a solo show in SF this month at Ratio 3), the attraction to her artwork lies in the viewer’s attraction to the lifestyle it portrays, whether that lifestyle comes from a real group of fearless, naked, and attractive twenty-somethings or posed photos made to generate that vibe. And personally I like the way her work doesn’t soften to criticism, it moves boldly beyond it to continually earn new rabid followers.
The big opening party for Sandy’s solo show is tonight (Thursday) from 7–10 p.m. at Ever Gold Gallery in the Tenderloin. Her work will be up through October 5, but if you’re going to go, I recommend opening night — when the party will be populated by a similar mix of the hot men, hot women, and hot messes she captures so vividly on film.
All images courtesy of Ever Gold Gallery
