I'm always surprised to find "art" in the San Francisco Art Commission's Grove Street window space and neighboring empty lot. Its architecture is not uncommon to retail or commercial storefronts and generally the most surprising thing about an empty lot in the city is that it remains undeveloped.

Of course there are many surprising (and strange) things to see and experience in the Civic Center area. What I like about the Grove Street windows is that it doesn't try, or perhaps is incapable of, divorcing from its surroundings the way many gallery spaces do.

Artist Midori Harima, on view in the Grove Street windows through October 2nd, seems to point to this observation with the title of her piece: Circumstantial Message. From a distance it appears as though installation might still be underway—a wide swath of white scrim stretched across both windows obscures the view into the space.

Approaching closer a figure becomes visible. The figure is three-dimensional, sculpted from Xerox copies. It is child-sized, the palms of its hands pressed against the glass. The figure is unfinished from the shoulders up—cut off at the same height as the bottom edge of the scrim. At the back of the space are sets of legs and feet arranged in regular rows, like soldiers (or prisoners?) standing at attention. The legs and feet are also made of Xeroxes, child-sized, and cut off and intersected by another layer of scrim.

As the title implies I am left to my own devices to interpret the "message" embedded in Harima's work. Does it have something to do with the passage from childhood to adulthood? Is it about the loss of curiosity and wonder as we learn to behave within social norms—as we learn to act like adults? Normally I would be frustrated by this kind of work, finding it emotionally charged but vague and without clear intent. But today I am happy to encounter it, happy to consider its possible meanings in relation to the street life slipping by, happy to behold a still moment amongst the constant movement.

http://www.sfacgallery.org