Jessica Silverman Gallery

SF Art Galleries - Openings & Events Event source calendar Event Link: see venue calendar above ^^ September 10–October 24, 2026 Opening Reception: September 10, 5-7pm Artist Walkthrough: October 2, 5-7pm Preview "28" Request PDF Jessica Silverman is pleased to present Sadie Barnette's second solo exhibition with the gallery titled “28” as it is the 28th solo exhibition of the artist’s career to date. On view September 10 through October 24, the show features new colored-pencil drawings and a new installation in ash and poplar wood that ask questions about perspective and legibility. Throughout the show, Barnette explores the history of abstraction, the social life of language, and the unconscious insights of the mundane. The work in “28” is as intellectual as it is embodied, revealing the significance of a single mark, and the multiple meanings of an ordinary phrase. For over a decade, Barnette has turned recognizable symbols and expressions into recurring motifs. Repeated mark-making and text-based abstractions materialize the unacknowledged weight of familiar sensations and experiences. Barnette’s practice is rooted in family legacy and personal exploration. In “28,” the artist extends questions of recognition and legibility through elemental forms and the phrase “good people.” Her painstaking, pristine drawings achieve an almost print-like precision, despite being made entirely by hand, while her carefully crafted sculptures make unconventional use of their materials. Through repetition, labor, and material transformation, Barnette gives form to the associations carried by even the simplest marks and phrases. Good People (Decaptych) (2026), for example, is an eleven-foot-long, three-dimensional rendition of the phrase “good people” in Cooper Black typeface. While her 2-D text works invite reflection and interpretation, Good People (Decaptych) also calls the body forward. Arranged around an open center, the sculpture turns the familiar phrase into a communal structure. “28” also debuts a group of colored-pencil drawings from her new DOTS series. Here the artist designs a pattern that is translated into a translucent vinyl stencil, building up color through tight, systematic layers. Each work follows one of three predetermined palettes—primary colors, rainbow, or black-and-white—and is further shaped by position and size. The process recalls the Conceptualist legacy of artists such as Sol LeWitt, who used written instructions to generate their compositions. Cool-gray shadows give the dots an illusion of depth, making them appear to hover above the paper, while some dots break into half-moon shapes. At a larger scale, the primary-colored circles recall John Baldessari’s use of disks to thwart the gaze, while their repetition evokes Howardena Pindell’s punched-paper compositions. Barnette engages in this art-historical conversation and reasserts the hand into forms associated with mechanical reproduction. In “28,” Barnette recasts the language of postwar American abstraction, challenging the presumed neutrality of its elemental forms. Familiar signs shift in scale, substance, and meaning. In Barnette’s hands, the ordinary becomes open and expansive. Concurrent with “28” at Jessica Silverman are Sadie Barnette’s solo exhibition at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska on view through January 3, 2027, and the site-specific photomural "How to Fly" on view at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, through October 3, 2027. As part of Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week, presented by the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), the gallery will host an exhibition walkthrough with the artist, led by Cornelia Stokes, Assistant Curator of the Art of the African Diaspora at SFMOMA and MoAD on Friday, October 2, from 5–7 pm. Sadie Barnette (b. 1984, Oakland, CA) has a BFA from CalArts and an MFA from University of California, San Diego. Barnette has enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; SFMOMA, CA…