1275 Minnesota St /
Jack Fischer Gallery
ONE-TWO PUNCH: Travis Somerville & Keris Salmon
The Jack Fischer Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of ONE-TWO PUNCH, a twinning of the work of Keris Salmon and Travis Somerville.
Travis Somerville takes on social injustice and the endemic political and educational structures in this country that have perpetuated oppression and racism for hundreds of years. Having grown up in the South, Somerville is keenly aware of the contradictions and hypocrisies inherent in that millieu, and of the racism so apparent and yet subsumed by Southern niceties and gentility.
His paintings are filled with powerful imagery that strive to expose the structures that seek to perpetuate the rampant and systemic oppression. But the latest piece,1965, is the most powerful and brutal of all. It consists of a simple and humble vintage ballot box on fire with a recording of Lyndon Baynes Johnson announcing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Keris Salmon’s cyanotypes serve in a way as silent witness, in direct and quiet contrast to the Somerville works. The conversation that is demanded/forced by dint of these works being in the same room is a marvelous opportunity to examine, as Salmon so eloquently put it in the title, The Architecture of Slavery, with the resulting effects on our current society as examined by the Somerville work. The quiet beauty of the mostly interior shots rendered in that blue twilight of the cyanotype gives us a dreamy enigmatic narrative that is laden with the feelings of the lives lived in those rooms.
Also on view is To Have And To Hold, a series of color photographs taken in a number of plantations. The almost sweetly commonplace photos are accompanied by text that comes from Salmon’s reading of books about slavery, diary entries by owners, among other material. The pairing of text with the photographs gives the viewer entree into the lives and moments of the absent human figure that one imagines.
Due to Covid restrictions the gallery will be open by appointment only. Please call 415-725-0308 or email.