Victor Reyes (b. 1978) arrived in San Francisco by way of Los Angeles in 1998. The City, bursting with the potential of its first tech boom, teetering precariously on the turn of a new millennium, and anxious with preoccupations of the Y2K scare, served as a muse and a teacher to Reyes. With changes coming in waves, ripping with the currents of a “mobbing culture heading towards the future” Reyes recounts the experience of watching a “higher consciousness forming.”
Already a Southern California street art icon, Reyes established himself in the Bay Area with an expansive public art project, painting murals of each letter of the alphabet around the city’s Mission District. Doing so, Reyes gladly obscured his role as a formal or informal artist.
Modernism is pleased to present its first solo exhibition of sixteen paintings and works on paper by Victor Reyes. Memory Only is on view from September 19, 2024 to January 10, 2025.
The exhibition title reflects the ephemerality of the chimera Reyes once observed, a time and place that exists now only as memory. He recalls watching “the cellular death of the twentieth century” as the digital age was ushered in. This convergence is echoed in the competing presence of the gestural marks, Matisse-like organic forms, and hardedge techniques found in this group of paintings, all created by painting a series of opaque and translucent layers with the use of screens and molds. With a color palette that ranges from bright and lively to dark and muddled, the works in Memory Only hold vigil for the vestige of San Francisco.
THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO A RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19TH FROM 6-8PM AT MODERNISM WEST
MODERNISM WEST / FOREIGN CINEMA
2534 MISSION STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94110
GALLERY HOURS: MONDAY-SATURDAY 5-10PM, SATURDAY 11AM-2PM, & SUNDAY 11AM-3PM
CALL (415) 648-7600 TO CONFIRM GALLERY ACCESS
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL: 415-541-0461 OR EMAIL: INFO@MODERNISMINC.COM
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