San Francisco gallery selects new work by Sharon Stone
Gallery 181 in San Francisco has selected Sharon Stone for a new exhibition featuring a series of 18 paintings never before shown.
On view April 11 through August 31, the gallery show is titled “My Eternal Failure”—and is the latest in a series of successes for Stone. In the past 12 months, Stone has been selected for four solo exhibitions in different cities throughout the U.S. and Europe.
The artist chose this title for the exhibition as a way to confront the valuable life-lessons she experienced during her six years living in San Francisco, some of her most vulnerable times ever. The exhibition is an ode to the place where she realized her strengths could overcome life-threatening challenges.
This is the fourth time in 12 months Stone is chosen for a solo exhibition, following the success of three back-to-back shows with strong reviews (in Los Angeles, in Greenwich, and the show currently in Berlin until May 18).
“We are thrilled to bring the powerful art of Sharon Stone for the first time to San Francisco. As a former resident of the City, she is integral to our cultural fabric and we are honored to welcome her back with this new gallery show,” says Matt Lituchy, the Chief Investment Officer of Jay Paul Company (JPC). “181 Fremont is committed to celebrating the intersection of art and our community with provocative and intriguing programs like this one.”
Located at an altitude of 700 feet in the sky, the art gallery serves as the crown of this majestic tower developed by JPC. The visually dramatic space on the 69th floor is the “highest art gallery in the world,” with unsurpassed views of the Pacific Ocean, the Bay Bridge, and all the major landmarks across San Francisco.
The cover of San Francisco Magazine’s April issue heralds the exhibition’s debut, and writer Michael McCarthy previews the gallery show by stating: “This fearless woman’s story takes on a new chapter. She picks up a paintbrush in the most genius way. As always, opening herself up to the world honestly and completely. She even returns to San Francisco to begin the work of finally healing, after a monumental health scare and heartbreak.”
“And now the world knows Sharon Stone as something entirely new, as bold as ever in her eternal quest at evolving,” adds McCarthy.
Seeing color in a new way
The near death experience of Sharon Stone’s 2001 brain injury in San Francisco profoundly impacted Stone’s creativity, allowing her to see colors in a whole new way.
The trauma, which almost ended her life, forever changed her relationship to color — expanding her ability to see more colors around her than ever before.
“This creative breakthrough happened to me in San Francisco, eventually leading me to a whole new world of creativity where I’m at today, through painting,” says Sharon Stone.
The sense of place of this exhibition reinforces “in situ” references — works of art that are made for a specific place, or that reference the site in which they are to be shown. Works that reflect their surroundings or the architecture framing them, revealing the complex relationship people have to a place.
Stone captured inspiration for several of the new works from the landscapes and diversity of people in San Francisco, yet she also wanted to paint the story of her time in the early 2000s when she lived in this place.
The exhibition centers on healing by confronting the vulnerabilities she experienced.
“I want this art exhibition to serve as a vehicle for self-forgiveness, and I hope it can help others do the same by letting go of societal stigmas and imposed perceptions,” says Stone.
“In this way, failures become sources of strength, and to face them is to keep growing. The exhibition’s title My Eternal Failure is freeing for me,” says Stone.
About Berlin
Stone also has a gallery show currently in Europe at Galerie Deschler Berlin (on view now until May 18). More than 14,000 people have visited Stone’s Berlin exhibition since it opened on Feb. 7.
Her Berlin show will be featured during the upcoming Gallery Weekend Berlin (April 26-28), one of the leading contemporary art events in Europe attracting more than 30,000 visitors from around the world.
About the artist
Sharon Stone’s art is praised by art world luminaries, including Jerry Saltz (the Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism).
“In a sort of mystic unraveling, I see someone living a life in art. Being a freedom machine. She more than survives. Sharon Stone walked through the valley of death and into an art supply store,” says Jerry Saltz. Saltz recently selected Stone for his artist talks at the Vulture Fest in Los Angeles, and at the acclaimed 92nd Street Y in New York.
The art historian Martin Oskar Kramer (Ph.D., Princeton University), says: “Stone’s paintings exude a raw and spontaneously expressive quality, resulting from a shifting alchemy of chaos and structure. An expression of the feminine that is deeply in touch with natural forces, fundamentally untamable. The recurring elements and symbols in her paintings signify change, flow and metamorphosis.”
Prominent art critics celebrating Stone’s exhibitions include: Helen Stoilas’ review in CNN Style (The Compulsive Power of Sharon Stone’s Art) and Whitney Mallet’s review in Artnet News (Hollywood Icon Sharon Stone on Her Most Challenging Role Yet: An Abstract Painter).
Painting has been part of Stone’s life since she was a child, under the tutelage of her Aunt Vonne who had a Master’s degree in painting. Her aunt inspired Stone’s lifelong love of art, and would create murals across the walls of the home where Stone grew up in small-town Pennsylvania.
Stone studied painting in college, but left to become a model in New York City. She went back to college in her late 50s in 2016, at Pennsylvania Western University to complete her degree in art and art history. Stone paints every day, sometimes up to 17 hours per day. The pandemic inspired her to redirect her creative energies, and her lifelong creative instincts transferred onto the canvas.
Stone’s upcoming new exhibition in San Francisco will open on April 11 until August 31 at Gallery 181 San Francisco.
