It’s arduous to search out paintings extra eminently huggable than Masako Miki’s furry creations. Half Nineteen Seventies lounge furnishings, half “Monsters, Inc.” character design, the ungainly-yet-cute bloboids beg for a pat on the pinnacle – or no less than no matter anatomy takes the place of “head” in these odd guys.
However please, be respectable and don’t really contact the artwork in “Night Parades,” a enjoyable exhibit working till December on the Institute of Up to date Artwork San Francisco. A Japanese-born artist who’s lived for many years in California (now Berkeley), Miki has colonized the area together with her largest presentation ever, encompassing each work and sculptures crafted from felt and lurking in a near-dark atmosphere.
“I hope that my works generate the kind of curiosity and empathy that enables us to come together,” she says. Certainly, you would possibly end up surprisingly stirred by these humping shapes. Because the museum’s curators write: “’Midnight March’ helps us understand deeper aspects of Miki’s ‘othered’ figures and recognize difference as a positive force, even as we are unsettled by it.”
Particulars: Exhibit runs 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday (open till 7 p.m. Thursday) till December 7, 2025, at 345 Montgomery St., San Francisco; free, icasf.org
