April 12th’s opening at 111 Minna Gallery will feature two solo exhibitions under one roof. 111 Minna Gallery’s Second Street Gallery will feature Survivors Of the Plague by Mike Davis. The connecting Zappa Gallery will feature Reversal Of Fortune by Michael Kerbow.
Mike Davis is a Modern Surrealist Painter who currently lives and works in San Francisco, California. Self-taught, Davis began painting seriously in 1997. His inspirations range from his mother's woodwork, hand-tooled leather, and home projects to art of the ancient world, surrealism, the Flemish masters of the Northern Renaissance. He renders complex surrealist works embedded with symbols of mortality, folly and hubris, fixed within whimsical compositions.
His works are featured in the permanent collection at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, many publications (Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose Magazine, HEY! Magazine, Art Ltd., Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art, Tatt Book: Visionaries of Tattoo, Beyond Tattoo, etc) and prestigious private collections around the world. In addition to painting, Mike Davis is an active musician, woodworker and owner of internationally-renowned Everlasting Tattoo.
Shortly before the pandemic, Michael Kerbow began working on a new series of allegorical paintings that he entitled “Late Capitalism”. This ongoing body of work portrays the return of dinosaurs as they overrun our world. These images signify our existential threat from climate change. The functioning of our society has inadvertently liberated destructive forces upon the earth. These dinosaurs are the specters of inevitable extinction. The cars and freeways symbolize our legacy of fossil fuel addiction. The various billboards and signage allude to the siren song of capitalism, and represent a culture myopically focused on hyper-commodification and consumption.
On a more personal level, this series of works are a form of nostalgia from his childhood. As a five year old, his two primary obsessions were cars and dinosaurs. These things were so cherished in his youth that it is not surprising they found their way into his artwork as an adult. However, it is worth noting that his depiction of dinosaurs is not based upon current paleoscience. Rather, He has tried to epitomize the classic illustrations of dinosaurs he remembered seeing as a kid. The work of paleo-artists like Charles R. Knight, Rudolph Zallinger, and Zdeněk Burian, from the first half of the 20th century, helped foster his young imagination. Therefore, this is his way of paying homage to them.
