Advertisement
Please join us to hear from Salmon Cooper and Selby Sohn discussing new and recent works, curated by New York-based writer Alana Heiss in LATELY, on view at Transmission Gallery. All are welcome to attend this free event, starting at 2 pm, Saturday, June 8th.Transmission Gallery is a second floor gallery accessible by a flight of stairs.
Cooper’s work on display here is what you could call genre painting—a practice depicting scenes of everyday life. These canvases are based on real life photos of parties, living rooms, and small Bay Area institutions like the Moler Barber College, where we see Cooper getting a haircut from a student barber, or the White Horse Inn, where a quiet moment of finger-holding flirtation (and the White Horse’s old red wall color) is immortalized.
Cooper documents, as he describes, “the real way that people act and dress…through a veneer of psychedelic color and cartoonishness.” His paintings seem to pop off the wall with vibrant hues, reminding me of Annie Dillard’s quote: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. For Cooper, the everyday is electric, pulsing sometimes fast, sometimes slow with the energy that animates life—the greatest cartoon of all.
Meanwhile, Selby Sohn’s new body of work, !!! (2024), pops off the wall. As Sohn writes:
“When I was at the Mountain School of Arts, we talked to D.V. DeVincentis, who discussed preexisting knowledge — television based on material that an audience is already familiar with, like the Barbie movie. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything in my life, in the art world, in reality, is preexisting knowledge, even abstract painting. All symbolism predates us, and we decide to cohere ourselves to those meanings. We wear clothes that existed before us and speak with invented words. When we choose to adorn ourselves, it is a way of us becoming that thing. I think about this when I use exclamation points. Am I softening the tone? Am I excited? My communications leave me traveling through the ether of the internet, landing in someone else’s mind, producing brain chemicals. They shift how that person feels, sometimes slightly, sometimes wildly. I wanted to personify my exclamation points and meld onto me what already feels affixed, to embody what I convey.”
Lately runs from May 9 - June 22, 2024 at Transmission Gallery in Oakland, CA. Please join us for an artists' talk with Cooper and Selby on Saturday, June 8 at 2pm.
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
770 W Grand Ave, Oakland, CA, United States, California 94612
