San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday)
Revamped pyramid is building up new public art
A new series of public art presentations, Pyramid Arts, aims to bring new life to the redesigned Transamerica Pyramid Center.
Michael Shvo, chairman and CEO of New York City-based real estate development company SHVO, along with Deutsche Finance America and other investors, bought the Transamerica Pyramid from Aegon in 2020 for $650 million and have been working on revamping the building with acclaimed British architect Lord Norman Foster. After investing $400 million in renovating and restoring its interior and exterior, Shvo feels the reimagined Transamerica Pyramid Center can serve as a unifying landmark between the business-minded Financial District and the cultural hubs of Jackson Square and North Beach.
To that end, Pyramid Arts is launching new programming with two exhibitions opening this month.
More than 20 sculptures by married French artists Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, known as a pair in the art world as Les Lalanne, will be presented in the Transamerica Redwood Park as well as inside the building’s newly updated lobby. Also in the lobby pavilion, “The Vertical City” exhibition will showcase art related to Foster’s work with skyscrapers.
Both are curated by Foster and will be unveiled following the center’s reopening ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 12, and on view through Jan. 28.
“When I bought the building, the first thing I said to my team was, ‘It’s the most photographed building in San Francisco, probably on the West Coast, but nobody comes here,’” Shvo told the Chronicle.
“It was really important for us that Transamerica Pyramid Center and Redwood Park become a place for people to come and enjoy.”
The Transamerica Pyramid was designed by architect William Pereira and opened in 1972. Although there were initially concerns the pointed building would compromise the beauty of the city’s skyline, it has since become a Bay Area icon. At 850 feet and 48 stories, it is also the second tallest structure in San Francisco after the Salesforce Tower, which was completed in 2018.
“Les Lalanne at Transamerica Redwood Park” is co-organized with Kasmin Gallery in New York and will feature sculptures ranging from whimsical animals to fantastical human figures and fragments of bodies. Their works, which were co-created together but are separate pieces of art, are often linked to movements like Art Nouveau, because of Claude Lalanne’s botanical themes, and surrealism, due to Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s imaginative animals. The show’s presentation amid the old trees and new landscaping of the park is meant to evoke the artists’ studio and garden near the Fontainebleau forest in France.
Foster said that it was a pleasure to curate work by the couple and noted that their animal and vegetation themes “come together in this outdoor exhibition, with animals occupying the landscape as a setting whilst the other works act as markers in the paved areas.
“This celebration of their work is a fitting inauguration for the next chapter of the Transamerica Tower and its redeveloped city block as a new vision for the city.”
The Lalannes (FrançoisXavier Lalanne died in 2008 at age 81; Claude Lalanne died in 2019 at age 95) were famous for their presentations outdoors and in public spaces, like the 15-foot topiary fountains titled “The Dinosaurs of Santa Monica” for the Southern California beach city’s Third Street Promenade in 1989. Their 2009 project “Park Avenue Recession Art” consisted of sculptures placed between crosswalks on New York’s posh Park Avenue and featured pieces like Claude Lalanne’s famed bronze apple, “Pomme de New York.”
Shvo has previously presented work by the couple in association with Kasmin Gallery. “Sheep Station” in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood installed a flock of 25 of Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s “Mouton” epoxy-and-bronze sculptures at a former Getty gas station in 2013, becoming a viral art-world hit at the dawn of the Instagram age. That
same year, he curated the sale of “Les Lalanne: The Poetry of Sculpture,” along with Kasmin Gallery for Sotheby’s. Six years later, Shvo created an exhibition at his Miami Beach, Fla., hotel, “Les Lalanne at the Raleigh Gardens.”
Spanning four decades of the artists’ work, the metal and concrete figures that will be on view at Pyramid Redwood Park include Claude Lalanne’s “Olympe,” which incorporates her cabbage leaf motif onto a model of the couple’s granddaughter, a rhinoceros by François-Xavier Lalanne, and even a few of his famed “Mouton” sheep, placed as though
grazing on a hillside.
“The Lalannes were never really exhibited in San Francisco,” noted Shvo. “It was important that we bring San Francisco the best of their work. We have pieces that are coming from probably 15 different locations.”
Shvo added that Pyramid Arts plans to host two outdoor shows a year, each running approximately five months. Pyramid Arts also has aspirations to host lectures, concerts and other performing arts in the park.
In addition to the art, a new information desk, kiosks for Sightglass Coffee and a florist shop helmed by San Francisco artist Tyson Lee are meant to encourage people to explore the publicly accessible areas before heading into the Transamerica Redwood Park.
This fall, Florida chef Bradley Kilgore is also expected to open two restaurants, Cafe Sebastian and Ama, on the ground floor of the Transamerica Three building across from the park.
Meanwhile, lawsuits between Shvo and Transamerica Pyramid tenant Core Club, which had entered a 20-year lease with SHVO, are ongoing.
“I think that now San Francisco is betting on itself, that is why we have a billion dollars invested here,” said Shvo. “We’re not only investing in real estate, we’re investing in the people of San Francisco.