Challenging SF’s ‘doom loop’ narrative

Veerakeat Tongpaiboon | Twilight

By MATT CHARNOCK
Underscore_SF

The adage that San Francisco is in a state of perpetual freefall has become clickbait as of late — but a new exhibition reminds us that SF is as resilient as it is beguiling.

San Francisco exists as a bastion for so many who left their homes to find a semblance of community; of kinship; to be in a community that celebrates themselves and what it means to live a good life on this entropic space rock. The Covid-19 pandemic forever changed our ideas of not only home but how we move about our daily lives.

The past three years have seen the media fixated on SF’s “mass exodus” and the decline of its downtown; the “doom loop,” if you will. But as we’ve waxed in countless tones and textures before: San Francisco’s problems aren’t unique — they exist in every large American metro to some degree.

But what is uniquely San Francisco is the city’s indefensible amounts of beauty. How it carries itself through seasons. The way SF elicits you to walk everywhere, bike everywhere else, and ditch your car keys for a Clipper card.

All of these peculiarities are on full display at the intersection of 17th and Harrison streets inside the 2121 Art Space.

For the month of August, the aforenoted culture hun has joined forces with the Thomas Reynolds Gallery to present San Francisco: Still Beautiful, an exhibition of cityscape paintings of San Francisco by artist Veerakeat Tongpaiboon. Included in the exhibition are two dozen recent paintings featuring scenes of San Francisco — each piece of art founded on Tongpaiboon’s three-plus decades in San Francisco.

Tongpaiboon’s style exists in a canon of creativity all to itself. He manages to create mesmeric dreamscapes that blur into the background, yet invite exceptional detail and investigations into the precision of each brush struck.

Tongpaiboon’s proclivity for urban living is apparent — “I like speed, I like buildings, I like cars,” he says. “The energy of the streets of San Francisco continues to inspire me.” His current display is a celebration of his life in San Francisco — a visual love letter to his years spent watching time pass in SF.

Slowly strolling through San Francisco: Still Beautiful is an exercise in stillness, gratitude and wonder. You’d be hard-pressed to not fawn and fall even deeper in love with SF by the time you exit.