Episode No. 691 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artists Kota Ezawa and Amy Pleasant. 

The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture is presenting “Kota Ezawa: Here and There – Now and Then,” an investigation into the creation of memory in the Bay Area and nationally, through March 9. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, features Ezawa and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s Alcatraz Is an Idea (2024), and Merzbau 1, 2, 3 (2021), and Ursonate (2022), which were among 11 Ezawas recently acquired by SFMOMA. “Ezawa” was curated by Frank Smigiel. Fort Mason will publish a catalogue on the closing weekend. SFMOMA is showing Ezawa’s National Anthem (2018) in “Count Me In”  through April 27.

Ezawa’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at many museums, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; the Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; and the Saint Louis Art Museum. His work is in the collection most major US art museums, and in museums in seven other countries. 

Pleasant is included in “Synchronicities: Intersecting Figuration with Abstraction” at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha. The exhibition examines some of the ways in which nine artists have recently navigated the space between abstraction and figuration. “Synchronicities” was curated by Rachel Adams, and is on view through May 4.

Pleasant’s work is also on view at The Carnegie, Covington, KY in “Southern Democratic” through February 15, and in “Vivid: A Fresh Take” at the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN through June 1. 

Pleasant has been included in exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts, the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and more. 

Instagram: Amy Pleasant, Tyler Green.

Air date: January 30, 2025.