Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Jaydra Johnson, Brittney Frantece, Blessing Greer Mathurin, and Quintessa Matranga pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast
The Prepaid Musician Plays Bad Music
Climate Control, San Francisco, CA
June 13 – August 2, 2025
The exhibition is refreshing and irreverent, mixing media and humor, and a unique viewing experience. Rather than a traditional hang, the paintings are installed about 2 inches higher than eye-level. My neck hurt from looking up by the time I left. I asked the gallerist about this choice and he said, “it didn’t cost anything extra!” Which is a great response. The show is deliberately embracing the rough-edged both in terms of layout and aesthetic. The tone is playful and experimental, challenging conventional expectations of gallery art and inviting visitors to engage directly with creative processes. Highlights included Morgan Corbitt’s romantic and moody, tightly cropped, realistically rendered paintings of quotidian objects (bottom of a green glass beer bottle, lily, crocheted lace). They look like film strips Chris Marker edited.
Reflection: What are free ways to make a show look more interesting?
Viaje a la luna
CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, CA
June 12 – October 11, 2025
Reanimating Federico García Lorca’s unrealized 1929 film script, this show curated by Diego Villalobos and Rodrigo Ortiz Monasterio, is one of the best I’ve seen in the city. Viaje a la luna reassembles fragments of Lorca’s vision reflection on themes of exile, identity, and creative interruption. The exhibition unfolds across the Wattis and Novack galleries, and blends archival photographs by Diane Arbus with kinetic lavender sculptures by Nina Canell, and a great 2018–2022 Rosalind Nashashibi video, “Denim Sky.” I walked in during the performance by Francesco Pedraglio, Autobiography of a Museum (that which opens, that which closes, that which keeps things safe, and that which makes things possible), and was glad I did. Viaje a la luna feels particularly relevant in its open-ended-ness. A thought-provoking and beautifully layered experience, free, immersive, and timely.
Reflection: What poet should have a show?