Jonathan Carver Moore is not one to rest on his laurels. Less than a year after opening his eponymous gallery on Market Street, he has launched a residency program in the empty 2,600-square-foot retail space next door. Now, Aplerh-Doku Borlabi’s BOLD, on view through June 8, is Moore’s inaugural artist-in-residency exhibition. The Ghanaian artist created all the work for the show — large-scale portraits using coconut sheafs to depict skin — during the seven weeks he spent in San Francisco.
Since he opened the gallery in March 2023, Moore has brought the work of several international artists into the space, including South African photographer Zanele Muholi and their Cape Town students, Nigerian painter Odinakachi Okoroafor and Cameroonian artist Sesse Elangwe.
Alongside this international roster, Moore has shown work by a textile artist from Atlanta, a Los Angeles photographer and an Oaklander who now lives in Detroit. He hopes this mingling of local, national and international artists will create a network of its own, with relationships forming that might bring American artists out-of-country opportunities, in turn.
It was only a few months after opening the gallery that Moore started thinking about running a residency. He wanted to give some of those more far-flung artists the experience of working in a different space, and to give Bay Area audiences the chance to see what and how they created. (Moving forward, he plans to invite local artists to the residency as well.)
“I wasn’t sure how it was all going to come together, but I think that sometimes, when you support the community, the community in turn supports you,” he says. “It took a couple of minds coming together to make this happen.”
