Floor 6: Remembrance (exiting Kiefer)
Overview
Gallery Wayfinding
You are in the Remembrance Gallery. The walls of this gallery are painted a deep charcoal gray, creating a contemplative atmosphere.
You've entered from the back right corner of this small square gallery, facing the far, front wall. A sculpture of four headless figures by Magdalena Abakanowicz, positioned in front of the left wall, dominates the space. Additional artworks are installed around the walls: two paintings by Gerhard Richter and a painting by Ross Bleckner.
There is a Shirin Neshat media installation in its own enclosed theater on your left. The entrance to this space is near the front left corner of the gallery, through a darkened hallway with black walls and a black, low-pile carpeted floor. Walk down this short, dark hallway to your left, and turn left. You've entered the the Shirin Neshat theater from the front left corner, facing the back wall. The media installation is on the right wall with two rows of vertically oriented benches on the floor in front of it.
The exit back into the main Remembrance Gallery is the same as the entrance. The exit to the Traces of Memory Gallery is in the front left corner of the gallery. The QR code is at the threshold on the right wall, marked with a perpendicular tactile floor strip.
Label
The artworks in this section concern mortality and mourning. Gerhard Richter's somber still life and Ross Bleckner's luminous abstraction summon a long tradition of light as a memorial for who have died and a symbol for the enduring life of the soul. Magdalena Abakanowicz's repeated anonymous figures—headless and hollow, with shroud-like burlap skin—become universal statements about the human condition. In Shirin Neshat's video Passage (on view in the neighboring gallery), a funeral ceremony in the desert culminates with a spectacular line of fire that surrounds both the wrapped body and the mourners, suggesting a cycle of death and rebirth.
Objects
5 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Artwork Label Text
1982
Oil on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1989
This image of two steadily glowing candles refers to traditional memento mori (Latin for "remember you must die") paintings, a genre that uses objects to represent the fleetingness of human life: The lit flame will inevitably be extinguished. Richter created this after a photograph of candles he set up in his studio, but the background provides no context. The blurring conveys a further sense of timelessness and melancholy. Richter has noted that his early-1980s candle paintings are related to "contemplation, remembering, silence, and death."
Visual Description
A painting measuring four feet high by three feet wide shows two slender, lit, white taper candles standing apart against a warm, green-brown background. The first candle sits slightly left of center and closer to the foreground, baring a soft white tone, while the right candle is placed slightly farther back and warmer in tone. Both flames are small and teardrop-shaped, painted with soft transitions from bright white at the core to yellow and orange at the edges. The left candle top comes to a slightly rounded tip. The left candle top appears more melted, with a warm orange tint near the flame on the right candle.
A muted surface occupies the lower portion of the composition, rendered in blurred, layered tones of mauve, gray, and brown. The candles cast faint, soft-edged shadows that trail towards the right off the edge of the painting. The candles rest upon a surface that appears flat, and the corner of this surface is visible, suggesting a square or rectangular table. The surface itself bears subtle, shadow-like variations that follow a faint grid-like structure and thus resemble creases from a recently unfolded tablecloth. The bottom shadow intercedes with one of these variations, creating a combined cross-like shadow.
The painting is in a white wood frame.
Artwork Label Text
1990
Oil on linen
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1991
Luminous dots spread across the canvas like dazzling stars in the night sky. The relation of these bright sparks to a deep, engulfing blackness brings up feelings of both darkness spreading and light breaking through. This abstract environment is Bleckner’s analogy for the body. The “count” in the title refers to T-cell count, an indicator of immune function in people with HIV. Light, here, is a dynamic medium conveying loss, hope, and memory.
Visual Description
A large vertical oil-on-linen painting (about nine feet tall by six feet wide) presents an abstract field of deep maroon and black punctuated by dozens of bright, soft-edged marks. The upper third is densest with small, warm pink and pale rose marks, each surrounded by a faint halo; some dots have brighter white-hot cores, while others blur into tiny cloudlets. Thin, vertical, semi-transparent streaks run from top to bottom across much of the surface, revealing the linen's texture beneath the dark layers. Scattered among the dots are a few elongated, ember-red forms—a brighter one near the left side, another slimmer one around the top right, and another one toward the lower right. The color deepens toward the bottom, where the field becomes darker and more saturated, with a purplish-red bloom near the lower center.
The painting is hung directly on the wall without a frame. The edges of the canvas are visible; they are unfinished and partially covered with paint.
Artwork Label Text
2001
Single-channel video installation with sound, 11:30 min.
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2001
Passage presents a Muslim funeral rite in the desert, alternating between three parallel scenes: a group of men carrying a corpse, a cluster of women digging a grave with their hands, and a young girl building a pile of stones. Only in the final frames of the film do the three elements unite. Neshat has said that this work, produced in collaboration with the US composer Philip Glass, was inspired by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—specifically televised images of funeral processions. Passage conjures a poetic image of loss, grief, renewal, and hope that is both contemporary and timeless.
Visual Description
[Visual and audio descriptions are forthcoming]
Artwork Label Text
1991
Color-coated glass
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2008
Visual Description
A large pigment-under-glass work, about seven feet high by five feet wide, presents a near-monochrome rectangle in deep cherry red with slight tonal shifts from reflections across the surface. Subtle reflections and shadowy shapes are visible within the sheen of the glass, which also reflects whatever appears in front of it, like a mirror. The panel’s edges are crisp and square, and a thin shadow line appears around the work, emphasizing the thickness of the pane.
Artwork Label Text
1990
Burlap, resin, wood, and steel
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2000
Visual Description
A large sculptural installation presents four life-size, headless and hollowed-out human figures standing side by side, forward-facing, atop a thick, weathered wooden beam that rests on two cylindrical log supports.
The figures, which are a mottled sandy-brown color, are evenly spaced with their shoulders about six to eight inches apart. Their fragmented bodies are slightly smaller than the average adult and appear to belong to adolescents, but lack gender-specific characteristics. Their torsos end at their necks, with irregular, broken edges where their heads would be. The backsides of the figures are fully open, revealing what appear to be solid, if partial, bodies, the front to be empty shells. Subtle variations distinguish them—some appear slightly broader through the shoulders or torso, and the contours of hips, thighs, and knees differ slightly—but all share the same rigid stance. They stand with their legs close together, feet planted directly on the wood, arms hanging straight down at their sides, and hands slightly behind their legs. Their surfaces, which are made of stiffened burlap and resin, are coarse and uneven. Seams, creases, and wrinkled textures run vertically along each figure.
The wooden base is a single long rectangular beam with visible cracks, knots, and grain lines, its mass lifted slightly above the floor by two round logs placed perpendicular beneath it—one near the left side and one near the right. The overall palette combines muted earth tones with raw materials and the repetition of the headless forms. The base is positioned about three feet in front of a wall, and the gallery lighting casts shadows of the log and figures onto the floor behind the piece.