NYAB Event - Souther Salazar “Souvenirs”

Souther Salazar “Souvenirs”

Jonathan LeVine Gallery

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Jonathan LeVine Gallery presents Souvenirs, a series of new paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations by Portland-based artist Souther Salazar, in what will be his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Works in Souvenirs were inspired by the Trading Tortoise, Salazar’s recent collaboration with his wife, Monica Choy. In 2012, the pair created an interactive art installation in the form of a tortoise-shaped trading post, which they took on tour, bartering unique objects and stories at locations in over 30 different cities across the country. During their travels, the artists explored America, exchanging tiny treasures and sharing adventures along the way. This unique community-oriented experience which connected a diverse group of people through a network of trades, is documented on www.tradingtortoise.com.

During Trading Tortoise, Salazar explored the connection between personal memories and collected objects, items that serve as tangible reminders of places, people and events. Organizing his memories of the project into imaginary collections, Salazar created artworks to represent his own visual souvenirs, referencing some of the experiences. Drawings of trucks, gas pumps and power lines take on anthropomorphic qualities while a series of small sculptures constructed from found objects are presented in curio-like shadow boxes—one contains a series of miniature water towers in varying shapes and sizes, and the other features a group of figures representing some of the people Salazar met, the things they traded and their relationships to those objects.

Themes in Souvenirs include travel, being on the road and the American landscape, re-interpreted through the artist’s signature whimsical style. The paintings contain winding roads and narratives of far off destinations with many interest points dotting the path along the way, serving as a metaphor for storytelling as well as the journey of life, itself.

Souther Salazar was born in 1978 in Hayward, California and is currently based in Portland, Oregon. In 2003, he received a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He utilizes mixed media, found objects and collaged layers of assemblage in his paintings, drawings and sculptures. Salazar’s work transports the viewer into an imaginative world full of flying spacecrafts and lost cities inhabited by a variety of creatures. His whimsical installations encourage exploration and discovery. Salazar’s work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Basel, Tokyo and São Paulo and included at exhibitions in institutions such as the Riverside Art Museum and the Japanese American National Museum, both in California.