Malcolm W. Kenter: Synecdoche @ SMCMoA

This fall, Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art (SMCMoA) opens a first solo exhibition of San Francisco-based artist Malcolm Kenter. The title of the exhibition, Synecdoche, refers to a literary figure of speech in which a part can represent a whole; for Kenter, this concept unites the fragments in his architectural paintings with San Francisco’s urban identity and culture. The exhibition brings together three distinct bodies of work that examine the weathered and worn infrastructure of San Francisco’s architecture.

Unfolding in reverse chronology, Synecdoche presents 21 works crafted by Kenter over a 10-year period. Recent works, such as Hoarder Window Shadow Box(es) and Hawk and Fan Intervention, consider architectural components disembodied from their larger forms. Through this process, Kenter provides a pause for San Francisco pillars, columns, and window frames to be seen in the context of visual and weathered decay, as evidenced by air vents, layered paint, and hostile design. 

Kenter’s works from the early 2020s focused on bare, deconstructed infrastructures such as alarm boxes and vents. Kenter views these works as archaeological relics that draw attention to defunct public entities that stand out in the ever-changing architectural landscape. The exhibition closes with studies of building facades from Kenter’s earlier explorations of San Francisco’s vernacular architecture and lore. The artist selected three works from SMCMoA’s permanent collection that speak to the Arts and Crafts Movement to be paired with this work, shifting the context of Synecdoche to show how the urban landscape of San Francisco continues to change. 

“By placing Kenter’s work into the larger architectural history of the San Francisco Bay Area, you can see how time and ideas shift, but the role of the artist remains,” states britt royer, Curator of SMCMoA. “By focusing on the fragment, Kenter draws our eyes to human interaction with architecture and design, enabling us to see the ordinary in a new way.”