Fog Design + Artplans to expand to mark a decade in San Francisco with a new program highlighting emerging artists and galleries.

被称为雾焦点,它将安置在梅森堡Center for Arts & Culture’s Pier 2 (the former home of the San Francisco Art Institute) and feature nine galleries from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York and Paris.

Fog Focus will run concurrent with the art fair in Pier 3, scheduled for Jan. 18-21.

“In its 10th year, there has been a kind of evolution for the fair itself and San Francisco,” Douglas Durkin, a member of the Fog steering committee told the Chronicle. “We’ve never been able to grow Fog in a meaningful way because of the limitations of the festival Pavilion at Pier 3.”

The closure of SFAI allowed for additional space close to the art fair, but with a distinct environment, he added.

“It allowed us to experiment with some fair expansion, but also focus on a shift in content where we could bring in different points of views from different parts of the art marketplace,” he said.

The galleries participating in the inaugural Fog Focus are Cult Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, which has galleries in San Francisco and Oakland; Et al.,乔纳森·卡佛摩尔,andSchlomer Haus Galleryof San Francisco; Johansson Projects in Oakland; Commonwealth and Council as well as Ochi from Los Angeles; George Adams Gallery from New York; and Crèvecœur from Paris.

Fog Focus steering committee member帕梅拉Horniksaid she feels “the city needs Fog and the entire San Francisco Art Week more than ever.” To that end, she said the committee looked not only for emerging galleries, but gallerists who contribute to the wider Bay Area arts community.

While Fog Focus galleries are equal participants in the art fair, their fees to exhibit are about $12,000 — half the price of exhibiting in Pier 3 — and booths in the main fair can range between $25,000 to $50,000 depending on size and placement. The reduced fees, Durkin said, are part of Fog Design + Art’s desire to include newer galleries and younger artists, and to bring more diversity to the fair.

“As a local, young gallery representing the breadth of queer culture, it feels validating that our perspective is being recognized within the community,” Brandom Romer and Steffan Schlarb, founders of Schlomer Haus Gallery, said in a statement to the Chronicle.

Their space is slated to feature work by photographer and SFAI graduate Chloe Sherman, whose show “Renegades San Francisco: the 1990s” premiered at their gallery in 2022.

Fog Focus will also feature an exhibition by the art centers Creative Growth, Creativity Explored and NIAD that will present works by Bay Area artists with disabilities.

乔纳森·卡佛摩尔, who opened his eponymous gallery focusing on Black and Indigenous artists of color as well as LGBTQ and female-identifying artists in March, told the Chronicle he believes Fog Focus “will further support the established and growing art scene in the Bay Area.”

Fog Design + Art was launched in 2014 and has been instrumental in helping establish San Francisco’s art week in January. In addition to Fog’s gala opening night, which benefits the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the robust Fog Talks programming, the week is now known as a time for local galleries and museums to debut new shows, host events and capitalize on the out-of-town visitors who come to the fair.

Pier 3 is expected to feature 46 exhibitors, with San Francisco’s Catharine Clark Gallery as one of eight participating for the first time.

Another first for the fair is a theme: “A Love Letter to San Francisco,” which steering committee member Susan Swig said will be evident in the fair’s entry displays and programming.

“Our art scene is thriving,” she said. “People really care about the arts in San Francisco. The theme is really our gift to the city.”

Reach Tony Bravo: tbravo@sfchronicle.com