Southern Exposure (art space)

SoEx offers visual artists the opportunity to work in formats and contexts that extend and challenge their artistic development and offers exposure to new audiences. With a focus on commissioning new work, SoEx supports artists in the development of large-scale projects, performances, workshops, and through residencies and gatherings to create a forum on contemporary sociopolitical and cultural issues and new modes of production. An artist-run Curatorial Committee made up of a rotating group of 8 artists and 2 staff members selects artists to develop and present new ideas.

Southern Exposure's exhibition program is curated by a committee of artists from the community. Artists that have shown at Southern Exposure include Harrell Fletcher, Lee Walton, Glowlab, Neighborhood Public Radio, Packard Jennings, Amy Balkin, Red 76, Jon Rubin, Ann Chamberlain, David Ireland, Alex Kahn, Amy Franceschini, Michael Swaine, Christian Maychack, Scott Oliver, Whitney Lynn, Stephanie Syjuco, and others.[1]

Each year, SoEx has a juried exhibition with an open call. The show is curated by a respected international curator. Past curators of the annual exhibition have included Magali Arriola, Tom Finkelpearl, and Kristan Kennedy. There is no fee for artists to submit their work for review.

SoEx's Artists in Education (AIE) program provides intensive art education programs to hundreds of underserved youth each year through in-school, after-school, and summer arts programs. SoEx provides teaching opportunities for artists and connects these artists to youth to provide critical and conceptual models for addressing the challenges of urban life.

One of SoEx's main goals is to support the professional development of artists so they are able to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alternative Exposure, SoEx's grant program founded in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, provides more than $65,000 of grants each year to individuals who work to promote other artists through exhibition spaces, publications, websites, critical writing and other activities. The Alternative Exposure program was initiated by former SoEx Executive Director Courtney Fink who first came to Southern Exposure in 2003 and departed in 2015.[2]

Since moving from Project Artaud in 2006,[3] Southern Exposure has supported "offsite" projects which happen in the city of San Francisco. SoEx's supported projects include rebargroup which mapped and used San Francisco's privately owned public spaces.

SoEx Off-Site commissions new temporary work throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that intervenes and interacts in the social and political spheres beyond the gallery. Public art is the newest addition to its programmatic agenda, and SoEx is one of only a few venues committed to supporting emerging artists working in the public realm.

SoEx engages in providing workshops, lectures, performances, talks, screenings, education programs, and symposia to create forums on contemporary aesthetic, sociopolitical and cultural issues, and that are designed to expand on ideas and issues presented in concurrent projects. SoEx provides access to affordable art through its Monster Drawing Rally, Auction and limited editions art works.

SoEx produces documentation for every project as a way to stimulate dialogue and engagement with the artwork and to encourage critical writing about the arts. SoEx considers documentation invaluable to exhibiting artists as it chronicles their projects and provides them with an immediate resource to use in promoting their work.