Rex Ray. Platismatia No.2 (detail), 2010, pigment print on Hahnemuhle paper, 42” x 62”, published by Gallery 16 Editions.
San Francisco in the early 1990 was covered by the shroud of death, as AIDS swept through the city, devastating a generation. Those who lived through the epidemic were forced to come to terms with the unthinkable: to carry on understanding the depths of the absence and the lives stolen from us.
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Artist Rex Ray (1956–2015) exhibited a piece at the final show at Kiki Gallery titled “Waiting for a Fax from Yoko,” which featured an unplugged fax machine set on a podium. Outside the gallery, Clifford Hengst sang as Yoko Ono, accompanied by Ray’s guitar feedback—and together they performed until the police came to shut the whole thing down.
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By the time of the performance, Ray had already been working as a graphic artist, trained before the advent of computer technology. He designed the first ACT UP! logo before they adopted the Gill Sans logo, “Silence = Death.” He abandoned the group when strangers arrived at the meetings talking about using bombs.
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Although he work was not overtly political, he understood the stakes and the forces at work. But he refused to abandon the importance of beauty, a central element no matter what he did. His style, which embraced the influences of the Arts and Crafts movement, Fluxus, Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, organic and hard-edged abstraction, pattern and textile design, and Op Art gave his work mass appeal, landing him commissions to design album covers for David Bowie, U2, Björk, Radiohead, and R.E.M., and collaborations Apple, Dreamworks and Swatch, among many others.
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Read the Full Story at Crave Online
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Rex Ray. Wall of Sound (detail).
From REX RAY: We Are All Made of Light by Gallery 16.