Image: Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, Long Beach
Dolby Chadwick Gallery will present ‘Some Quieter Melody,’ an exhibition of recent paintings by San Francisco-based artist Ian Kimmerly, from September 3 through September 26, 2026. The exhibition brings together layered oil paintings that examine human connection, fragmentation, plurality and impermanence through confident brushwork, constellations of color, and figures built from fragments and repetition.
The presentation will be held at Dolby Chadwick Gallery, located at 210 Post Street, Suite 205, in San Francisco. An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, September 3, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The gallery’s listed public hours are Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Kimmerly’s recent work extends his sustained interest in the intricacies of human connection while shifting attention toward ruptures in social bonds. The gallery describes these breaks as connected to economic and political systems that benefit from division, as well as to the meaning and beauty produced by increasing fragmentation. Rather than treating the figure as a stable or complete presence, the paintings allow bodies, faces and surrounding forms to emerge through partial views and repeated elements.
The exhibition’s title comes from Polish writer and activist Olga Tokarczuk. In her Nobel Lecture, ‘The Tender Narrator,’ Tokarczuk argues for a “fourth-person” perspective that could counter the limitations of individual viewpoints. The gallery relates this idea to paintings whose disparate elements gradually begin to resonate, with connections becoming perceptible over time. In this context, “some quieter melody” refers to a harmony distilled from an abundance of noise.
The works also move beyond the confines of traditional figuration through instinctive applications of abstraction. In ‘Changeable Like the Sea’ (2026), hidden faces are diffused by forms that may suggest waves, wind or the passage of time. The painting’s visual arrangement implies continuous change while maintaining the reality of what it depicts, creating a tension between visibility and uncertainty.
Other works, including ‘More Facsimiles’ (2026), ‘Mimicry’ (2025) and ‘All Echoes’ (2025), revisit questions of plurality, authenticity and impermanence in relation to technology and artificial intelligence. Blue hues and fragmented motifs convey uncertainty, while lush green fields, distant mountains and bodies of water introduce elements of balance from the natural world. The gallery also places Kimmerly’s approach in relation to the Language Poets of the 1960s and 1970s, describing a practice that deconstructs established art norms in favor of creating meaning through a personal visual language.
Kimmerly received an MFA from the University of Arizona and studied at the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Santa Fe Art Institute, and received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. ‘Some Quieter Melody’ will be his fourth solo exhibition with Dolby Chadwick Gallery, remaining on view through September 26, 2026.
