A rich walnut table with plug-and-play totems and a tiny precious blue horse added to a spiritual shift at this year’s event at Fort Mason.
This story is part of Fair Take, our reporting on global design events that looks up close at the newest ideas in fixtures, furnishings, and more.
One of the West Coast’s best art and design fairs is hitting a growth spurt in its teenage years: San Francisco’s FOG Design + Art fair is established enough to assert its identity, but still young enough for boisterous experimentation. The 12th edition of the event saw strong showings from established international galleries making encore appearances, but there were also several first-time FOG exhibitors, many of them showing up-and-coming artists from the Bay Area and beyond.
Taking place across two piers at San Francisco’s Fort Mason, FOG also always has familiar faces—and, surprisingly, some new-to-me Bay Area mainstays that I’m delighted to discover. This year it was Crown Point Press and William Stout Books. But I also love finding out about international artists working in mediums like glassblowing, woodcarving, ceramics, weaving, and more. The real magic of FOG is seeing art displayed alongside design, revealing the beauty of craft in all its forms.
Photographer Cayce Clifford and I teamed up again this year to peruse FOG’s opening party in search of the fair’s most off-the-wall showings from near and far. Winding our way through the booths, it was easy to lose track of time as we enjoyed the simple pleasure of leaning in. Here’s an up close look at what we found.
Marta Gallery
Now in its third year, FOG FOCUS, the fair’s platform for emerging artists, had its biggest showing yet with 16 galleries. Located in its own pier at Fort Mason, the exhibition is always buzzing with experimentation. A newcomer to this year’s fair, Los Angeles’s Marta Gallery had one of our favorite FOCUS booths, dedicated to a tandem showing of work by New York–based designer Minjae Kim and photographer and sculptor Dominik Tarabański.
"We wanted to participate in FOG because it’s one of the only fairs that, without arbitrary boundaries or categorizations, places art and design on the same plane," Marta’s cofounder Benjamin Critton told us. The gallery’s booth did just that, with lighting and furniture by Kim sitting alongside photographs by Tarabański, the two in intimate dialogue. Kim and Tarabański are friends and have studios in the same building in Brooklyn, so a joint showing was a natural way to continue their artistic conversation.
Blunk Space
A Bay Area treasure, Blunk Space is a Point Reyes gallery and research center dedicated to the legacy of local designer JB Blunk. Founded by Blunk’s daughter, Mariah Nielson, the gallery first made an appearance at FOG last year in the fair’s retail section, FOG MRKT. This year, Blunk Space had its own booth at FOCUS, with a group show of contemporary furniture by Rio Kobayashi alongside historic paintings by a trio of Blunk’s artist friends. Also on view were a selection of tabletop sculptures by current artists that are part of the gallery’s "100 Candleholders" exhibition, now on view.
Seeing Kobayashi’s blocky chairs and stools next to abstract paintings by Richard Bowman, Fritz Rauh, and John Anderson made them feel even more sculptural, lifting them out of the functional realm into the world of artistry.
See the full story on Dwell.com: Goopy Little Mushroom Lamps—and More Cosmic Objects From FOG Design + Art Fair 2026
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