Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Dana Hart-Stone: The Life and Times of Plaid

Jan 11 – Mar 7, 2020
248 Utah St, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States

A new show from this Bay Area artist takes its name from a 13-foot, five-panel mural containing 616 vintage black-and-white photographs—all of them picturing something plaid. The snapshots are arranged to create a sort of oversized photo album, and anything plaid has been given a digital shot of color, bringing another level of rhythm to the mural’s mosaic-like patterning. The installation is accompanied by round paintings that further echo the chaotic yet self-contained patterns created by digital manipulation of vintage imagery. Hart-Stone invites American visual history into a colorful dialogue with contemporary times and techniques. —J.V.

Dana Hart-Stone, “The Life and Times of Plaid,” 2019. Courtesy of Brian Gross Fine Art Gallery, San Francisco.