Got to see Andy Vogt’s installation in the back of Adobe Books earlier this month; I like how Eric Heiman connects it to San Francisco’s recent history today on the SFMOMA blog:“Since the economic boom of the late 1990s, the architectural landscape of San Francisco has changed dramatically. Never have so many high-priced residential buildings sprouted up to fill the foggy sky, and this current recession has only temporarily slowed the gutting renovations of many existing homes. Just the existence of Vogt’s work with recovered wood lath, a construction material of a bygone age, is a comment on a city in motion, a metropolis evolving into a new landscape that nurtures some while expelling others. “Sustained Decay” can be seen two ways: as a requiem for the back rooms of old bookstores that may soon disappear, and a dream that art will always counter—if quietly, secretly—the forces that work to smooth off the rough edges of the city.”
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P.S. The occasion for the installation is Adobe Books' upcoming renovation, so they're not a decrepit independent about to close the doors. I mean, they are kind of decrepit, but in a good way; 19th-century plaster and lath decay independently of boom and bust cycles.
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