
02.03.25
Fair Report
All the Best Things We Saw at This Year’s 2025 Fog Design+Art Fair in San Francisco
Traveling to last month’s FOG Design+Art fair was a particularly charged experience for me this year — held two weeks after the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles, where I’ve been hibernating all winter, it was something of a reprieve; a chance, both literally and figuratively, to take a breath after all that happened here. Of course I only had the privilege to do so because I was unaffected materially by the fires, unlike so many others facing horrible loss, but it’s just to say that traveling to a fair in the wake of a tragedy was not such a frivolous event as it may have been in past years. I was eminently more grateful just to be there.
Seeing good work was merely the icing on the cake this time around. As in past years, the Fog fair itself — which takes place at the Fort Mason Center events space, situated directly on the San Francisco Bay — was the centerpiece of the week’s activities, welcoming 45 galleries in its main building and 13 more in its Focus satellite just a few steps away. There were fewer design presentations this year, to be sure, but I still made some very significant discoveries: a pair of stone-studded tables in aluminum by Parafernalia at the AGO Projects booth that I absolutely melted over, a monolithic black ceramic bookstand by Xavier Mañosa Studio at Side Gallery, new work in wood by SU Hot List alum Casey McCafferty at FUMI’s booth, and a new collection by another Hot Lister, Kim Mupangilaï, on view with Superhouse. Fog also had a new, delightful little area of high-end shoppable works by local studios, with offerings by Blunk Shop and Permanent Collection, among others.
Blunk Shop’s Mariah Nielson was prolific outside of the fairgrounds this year as well. At her Blunk Space gallery in Pt. Reyes, she put on an exhibition of furniture by Ryo Kobayashi and paintings by Fritz Rauh, but she also joined together with Studio Ahead for a dream-team co-curated exhibition called Same as the Blue Sky. On view until February 22, it celebrates Northern Cali artists and designers, from Garry Knox Bennett to up-and-comer Kate Greenberg, who made an epic ping pong table for the show. San Francisco is small as design scenes go, though, so Greenberg had a hand in multiple events as well, also co-curating this year’s Works in Progress show, a collection of monumental benches by eight different local designers.
Other highlights noted below include a gorgeous Rafael Triboli show presented by AGO at Anthony Meier’s gallery in Mill Valley, which we previewed in a recent interview with Triboli here, plus a show of new highly crafted wood furniture designed by the cult menswear designer Evan Kinori at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and a highly enjoyable exhibition by Davina Semo of 21 bells, each with their own distinct personality, at Jessica Silverman Gallery. We’ve laid it all out for you below!
Kim Mupangilaï for Superhouse at FOG
Photos: Erik Benjamins
Fumi Gallery at FOG
Casey McCafferty
Jamesplumb
Casey McCafferty // Photos: Stephane Aboudaram
Parafernalia for AGO Projects at FOG
Side Gallery at FOG
Studio Xavier Mañosa
Photos: Stephane Aboudaram and Jara Varela
Same As the Blue Sky
Garry Knox Bennett (chairs), Squeak Carnwath (painting), Kate Greenberg (ping pong table)
Isaac Vasquez Avila (totem), Nobuto Suga (sculpture), Squeak Carnwath (painting)
Kate Greenberg
Isaac Vasquez Avila // Photos: Ekaterina Izmestieva
Ryo Kobayashi and Fritz Rauh at Blunk Space
Photos: Chris Grunder
Davina Semo at Jessica Silverman Gallery
Photos: Ed Mumford and Philip Maisel
Rafael Triboli for AGO Projects at Anthony Meier
Photos Chris Grunder
Works in Progress III
Adrien Segal
Brooke Intrachat
Ben Peterson
Michael Mellon (foreground)
Hanneke Lourens
Mac McComb // Photos: Sahra Jajarmikhayat
Evan Kinori at Headlands