Press Release - Objects of Inquiry: The Office for the Study of the Ordinary
Liz Hernández, Researchers in the Field #2, 2025, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches, Edition 1/1
Objects of Inquiry: The Office for the Study of the Ordinary
FEBRUARY 22 – APRIL 5, 2025
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, February 22, 1 to 3 pm
Regular Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 12 to 4 pm
Saturday Hours: February 22 & April 5 only
Address: 1600 Holloway Avenue, Fine Arts Building, Room 238, San Francisco, CA 94132
EXHIBITION IS FREE and open to the public
Objects of Inquiry is the culmination of an artist residency with Liz Hernández at SF State's School of Art, sponsored by the Harker Fund of the San Francisco Foundation. Over the last twelve months, Hernández has been serving as the lead researcher for the fictional Office for the Study of Ordinary. Her office focused on investigating the everyday and documenting hidden narratives creating objects, images, and writing, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration, vulnerability, curiosity, and experimentation. This culminating exhibition features documentation of the physical office, processes, artifacts, collaborations, and printed material of the O.S.O.
Top: Liz Hernández, March of the Gator #25, 2025, Acrylic on paper, 15 x 22 inches, Bottom: Liz Hernández and Clara Sperow, March of the Gator #27, 2025, Acrylic on paper, 15 x 222 inches
In the most austere confines of the university, where bureaucracy seems to have banished all possibility of wonder, the Office for the Study of the Ordinary materializes. The office brings together a group of unconventional researchers trained to understand the poet’s mission: summoning beauty where it holds no right to exist. They are not only dedicated to finding awe in their surroundings but also having the courage to dig into their own lives: the dreams postponed by dwindling institutional resources, the small triumphs hidden between paperwork, and the vulnerabilities often left out of the curriculum.
The O.S.O. researchers are archaeologists of the present, excavating both the seemingly mundane—those places and moments we all experience but no one records—and their own biographies, transforming each discovery into a piece of art.
Liz Hernández, Researchers in the Field #3, 2025, Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches (40.6 x 50.8 cm), Edition 1/1
Their work weaves together the institutional and the intimate, the administrative and the confessional; it demonstrates that the most arid reality contains secrets revealed only to those with the patience to look twice at what everyone else prefers to ignore, beginning with oneself.
The Office for the Study of the Ordinary has a singular mission: to reveal that art can spring forth even from the greyest corners of the institution, but only if we dare to look deeply enough.
-Liz Hernández, Lead Researcher.
Liz Hernández, O.S.O. ID card, 2025, PVC, digital print, holographic elements, 3.375 x 2.125 inches