SF Art Events: Week of 1.25.26
Chris McCaw
Inverse #76 (Mojave), 2023
2 Unique paper negatives, partial in-camera solarization
21 x 45 inches, framed
Signed, titled and dated on verso
THING ONE: Chris McCaw, Reversals and Revolutions
Jan 21 - March 7, 2026
Haines proudly presents Reversals and Revolutions, our second solo exhibition with renowned photographer Chris McCaw (b. 1971, lives and works in Pacifica, CA). McCaw’s singular artistic practice foregrounds photography’s essential components — light and time, lenses and light-sensitive materials — to generate startlingly inventive photographic forms. Reversals and Revolutions debuts his newest body of work, Inverse, alongside a selection of his signature Sunburn prints. Rendered entirely in-camera through McCaw’s years-long mastery of complex and little-known photographic processes, the exhibited works are unique, direct prints — emerging from the camera to the developer tray without post-processing, cropping, or manipulation: raw recordings of light. This highly anticipated exhibition marks McCaw’s first solo showing in San Francisco in nearly a decade, and opens in tandem with SF Art Week 2026.
LOCATION: Haines Gallery, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building C, San Francisco, CA (map)
HOURS: Tuesday to Saturday: 10:30 am - 5:30 pm, Closed on Sunday and Monday
THING TWO: "First Painting" by David Wilson
Ongoing - JanUARY 31st
"First Painting" presents one large-scale new work by David Wilson alongside a group of recent and older work. Wilson has spent the last two decades developing a practice around carrying materials out to the places he works. He has grounded his process in paper, ink, pencil, and watercolor. Having left behind an indoor studio practice, David pursues a free approach that centers on exploration and the capturing of moments in place, natural to the spirit of drawing and the weight of paper. Over the last few years, an interest in oil paint and canvas has brought up a curiosity as to how a person who draws might paint.
This exhibition presents David Wilson's first oil painting on canvas, made using the same process he has used to make large scale works on paper: each day carrying out a new canvas to work from the same vantage point at a site in the Oakland Hills, continuing each day's canvas from the memory of the last and piecing together the full group of canvases only in the end to reveal a whole. This whole is the sum of individual experiences of the place over time. This piece is 24 canvases, marking 24 days visiting a site in Oakland's Claremont Canyon throughout the month of December 2025. This particular location, off a deer trail that he followed years ago, has developed into an important place for David. He has created a series of large-scale works here, including his first color work in 2020, a watercolor composed of 75 distinct pages. It is a site he now associates with encouraging himself to try new things, using the familiarity and the deep relationship with the place and the view as a mirror to reflect on what else has changed.
LOCATION: Small Works Projects at MSP, 1275 Minnesota St., Gallery 107, San Francisco, CA (map)
HOURS: Not listed. Most MSP galleries are open Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am–5 pm
THING THREE: 1-800 Happy Birthday
1-800 Happy Birthday Installation; Courtesy of WORTHLESSSTUDIOS.
January 19 – February 14, 2026
1-800 Happy Birthday is a multi-format project rooted in love, remembrance, and care. It honors the lives of Black and Brown people lost to police violence by returning to what is most human: the act of celebration. Through voice, image, and shared ritual, the project creates space to speak names, tell stories, and mark birthdays that continue even after loss.
The project began as a series of short films in 2014 about the histories of families who have experienced loss due to police violence and systemic racism and evolved into 1800happybirthday.com, a digital voicemail archive where loved ones and the public could leave birthday messages for individuals killed by police. 1-800 Happy Birthday later expanded into a large-scale immersive exhibition and public installation in Brooklyn, NY. The project allows loved ones and the public to leave voicemails for the birthdays of those unjustly killed and makes the messages available for public listening. At its core, 1-800 Happy Birthday rejects the notion that memory must be anchored in tragedy. By centering birthdays instead of death, each call becomes an act of love, a defiant gesture against erasure and forgetting.
1-800 Happy Birthday is preparing for a homecoming, exhibiting in San Francisco, where it was originally created, and where it will serve as both a mirror and a confrontation. The project exposes the systems that perpetuate harm while creating space for Black and Brown communities to be seen and heard without exploitation. It challenges the myths of progress and liberalism, asking all who encounter it, from grieving families to the affluent, to reckon with the realities beneath the surface.
LOCATION: The Guardhouse at Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd. San Francisco, CA (map)
HOURS: The installation is free and open to the public, viewable through the windows 24 hours a day.
