Gallery 1337 is our flagship gallery at the heart of Art Works Downtown. Facing Fourth Street and serving as the main entrance, Gallery 1337 showcases an ever-changing mix of traditional, contemporary, and cutting-edge art by a diversity of Bay Area artists. Visitors encounter dynamic group shows, high-concept exhibits, and thought-provoking themes that reflect the pulse of today’s art scene.
Gallery 1337
(3 words)
an art game of telephone
August 7—September 26, 2026: Exhibition Dates
August 14 + September11: Reception & 2nd Friday Art Walk
Featuring an expanding network of Bay Area artists, (3 words) is a visual and verbal art game in which the exhibition theme mutates playfully over the course of the show. An artist chooses one work of art and describes it to another artist in just 3 words. Using those words as a prompt, the second artist chooses a work of their own to exhibit, then shares 3 words about that piece to a third artist. And so on, until the gallery is filled.
Will artworks added later in the game retain traces of the original theme, or will they forge into entirely new territory? We’ll follow the threads and find out.
Artists:
Holly Bobisuthi, Lana Capron, Tanya Gill, Ella Rose Ledyard, Julia Ledyard, Martin Ledyard, Nichol Markowitz, Phil McGaughy, Luca McGrath, Joshua Moreno, Lucía Moreno Nava, Sun Park, Miguel Ramos, Matt Reynolds, Naomi Alessandra Schultz, Carroll Swenson-Roberts, Rebecca Szeto, Chelsea América Torres, Eleanor Trombla, Saint Urbano, Whitney Vangrin, Margot Vaughan, Hayoung Yun, and more!
Curator: Naomi Alessandra Schultz
Ella Rose Ledyard
next best option, 2022, mixed media, 11" x 14"
Julia Ledyard
Adoration of Strangers (triptych), 2026, ceramic, 10" x 18" x 0.25"
Nichol Markowitz
Nigredo, 2024, monoprint collage on dyed kozo paper, backed with Sekishu paper, 42" x 42"
Chelsea América Torres
Funhouse, 2026, video installation, 13" x 23"
Curatorial Statement
“Surrealist games and procedures are intended to free words and images from the constraints of rational and discursive order, substituting chance and indeterminacy for premeditation and deliberation.” — Mel Gooding, A Book of Surrealist Games
“Call all you want, but there’s no one home
And you’re not gonna reach my telephone.” —Lady Gaga
(3 words) follows a long tradition of art games and spontaneous activities intended to bring the unexpected—what the Surrealists called “objective chance” or “the certainty of hazard”—into the creative experience. A dynamic interplay between words, images, and meaning is fundamental to the formulation and interpretation of fresh ideas. Through language, image creation, and material exploration, emergent abstract concepts may take root and become profoundly real. And vice-versa: powerful works of art and writing have the capacity to give rise to entirely new ideas or ways of looking at things.
Modeled on the children’s game of telephone, in which a message morphs in unanticipated ways over the course of a human transmission chain, (3 words) was created in order to discover what happens when artists are invited to transform the energy of an exhibition in real time through their own word and image choices.
A sense of playfulness and collaborative, impromptu meaning-making breathes life into community and collective artistic practice, and the artists of (3 words)embrace that ethos. Holding the process lightly and letting their work and imagination lead the way, they map out new and unexpected pathways of language, art, and meaning. And—lucky us! We get to play along.
Curator: Naomi Alessandra Schultz