The Grabhorn Institute

2023 Gallery Exhibition Schedule

Arion Press has revitalized its Gallery with a series of exhibitions highlighting local voices and collaboration between the visual and literary arts. Tamsin Smith—Arion’s first Curator in Residence—has envisioned an exciting line up of shows in 2023.

Forever Saroyan is proud to present this exhibition of William Saroyan's art and artifacts at the Arion Press Gallery featuring more than thirty works of art from Saroyan and his cousin, poet and painter Archie Minasian. The exhibition also features artifacts of Saroyan's career writing books, plays, screen treatments, and many of his extensive collection of letters to and from luminaries around the English-speaking world. Included in the exhibition are several letters and publications documenting the long relationship between Saroyan and Grabhorn and Arion Press, beginning in 1935. 

To celebrate the release of Arion’s edition of Slaughterhouse-Five, the Arion Press Gallery will commission five Bay Area artists to create new work in response to Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war classic. The show, entitled Slaughterhouse 5 x 5, will feature five artists known for powerful narrative force and creative innovation: Taraneh Hemami, Oliver Hawk Holden, Kevin Keaney, Josué Rojas, and Cate White. The work of each of artist will be inspired by the novel’s themes of war, death, incarceration, time travel, science fiction, and masculinity in a contemporary context. This dynamic exhibition will be presented by Arion’s Curator-in-Residence Tamsin Smith.

RSVP for the opening party on Saturday, April 15th from 6-8 p.m at this Eventbrite page.

To celebrate our inaugural partnership with the Asian Art Museum, Arion Press is proud to present a unique pop-up exhibition in the atrium of our Presidio workshop centering on the work of artist Lam Tung Pang.

This exhibition will center around Arion’s limited-edition collaboration with Lam, a novel interpretation of the artist’s monumental “Past Continuous Tense” installation currently on view at the Asian Art Museum. The book features a companion poem especially commissioned for the project from Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, Forrest Gander.

To further mark this special occasion, Arion has produced a four-color relief print of the artist’s drawing “We Need Sun & Books” which will be on view along with a selection of works ranging from drawings, prints, video, and found objects, and reflect the artist’s experiences during the social turbulence in Hong Kong during 2019, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hand Bookbinders of California (HBC) will commemorate its 51st anniversary with the annual members’ exhibition highlighting the organization’s dedication to preserving and perpetuating the traditions of fine binding and book arts. HBC membership includes students, makers of artist books, collectors, conservators, papermakers and paper decorators, fine printers, printmakers, writers, book dealers, and other lovers of the book arts. This year’s exhibition returns to the Arion Press Gallery and will feature 10 unique, handmade bindings of Arion’s publication Poe’s Phantasia and The Raven, featuring artwork by Natalie Frank. 

The dramatic rise in the attempts to ban books from library shelves and classrooms across the country has thrust the vital role of books into the public eye. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, and religion and those written by authors of color, women, and members of the LQBTQ+ community are often most in the line of fire. For the (un)BANNED exhibition, Arion will commission local artists to exhibit work that celebrates the power of books to expand imaginations, open paths to empathy, and act as bulwarks against fear and misunderstanding. Artists will create works of solidarity to challenge book bans as threats to free expression and celebrate the authors whose words have withstood censorship. 

2022 Gallery Exhibition Schedule

March 5, 2022 will mark the 15th anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad’s literary corridor al-Mutanabbi Street, which inspired local bookseller and poet Beau Beausoeil to found the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here movement. Each year, artists across the globe come together to organize readings as an act of witness to affirm the free exchange of ideas. This loose coalition of literary activists and artists have produced broadsides, anthologies, prints, and a photography project titled Shadow and Light. 10 local participants will read their artist statements at the opening.

To mark Arion’s release of Neruda’s 100 Love Sonnets this summer, we have invited 10 artists from a variety of disciplines to create new artwork inspired by 10 selected sonnets. Hence: Neruda 10x10. The show will present a dynamic range of visual artwork to spotlight some of the Bay Areas’s most innovative creators and the mood of the current moment, as well as the timeless resonance of Neruda’s verse. Featured artists: Kim Anno, Ashwini Bhat, Paz de la Calzada, Mary Fernando Conrad, Gina M. Contreras, Matt Gonzalez, Felix Quintana, Gustavo Ramos Rivera, Emilio Villalba, and Rochelle Youk.

Ana Teresa Fernandez will expand her site-specific artwork On The Horizon, which premiered in San Francisco and has been presented internationally, into a unique installation for the Arion gallery. The artwork aims to dismantle the border between the cold facts of climate change and the psychological challenge of internalizing its potential impact by visually translating the expected 6 feet of sea level rise into paintings, film, and a site-specific installation.

"Dyslexic Dictionary" is a provocation — an invitation to explore and redefine. Nine dyslexic artists have been commissioned to produce a creative response to words, books, poems and even the alphabet itself, highlighting how their minds experience language. Participating artists include Governor Gavin Newsom, Gil Gershoni, Adeniyi Akingbade, Christian Boer, Adam Eli Feibelman, Sally Gardner, Martin Grasser, Rebecca Kamen and Kelsey Ann Kasom.

The exhibition is on display, October 22 through December 22 at the Arion Press Gallery. RSVP for the opening party on Saturday, October 22nd at 6 pm at this Eventbrite page.

For more information about the exhibition, visit dyslexicdictionary.com.