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    A Growing Season

    August 19-October 28, 2023

    Jessica Silverman is thrilled to celebrate the gallery’s 15th anniversary. In its third location with a staff of ten people and a roster of almost thirty artists, Jessica Silverman will host a pop-up exhibition on the fifth floor of 615 Grant Avenue (next door to the main gallery space in San Francisco’s Chinatown), opening August 19. Titled A Growing Season, the exhibition explores maturation, transformation, and advancement with a range of new and commissioned works from gallery artists.

    Buttressed on the left by a ribbon-work motif, in this work a Ponca girl is offering a dead rodent to a pack of foxes who are harvesting a bounty of green apples – it is a gesture of bargaining, or perhaps capitulation. Symbolically loaded, this garden of Eden is crimson red and a hilly dramatic landscape is suggested, where the artist playfully weaves the figure and animals through evocative swaths of hue.
    Perspective is at play in this work: a circular table is seen from above and strewn with teatime accoutrements at various angles and orientations. Through the ritual of tea, Tut explores the dichotomy between daily life and existential struggle. Each cup of tea represents a moment of hope for self-care, rest, and reconnection with oneself. While the fruit remains untouched, the Laddoos, perhaps the most universal and ancient of Indian sweets, have been mostly devoured.
    Location VI combines Butler's fascination with cinema alongside his long history with San Francisco. In the background of the painting is an image of North Beach, at Fresno Street, looking west toward Romolo and Grant Avenue. The small streets and alleys are suggestive of stories real or imagined, including Butler's own layers of history and memories from the time he lived close by.