Ian Kimmerly: Some Quieter Melody

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Ian Kimmerly Some Quieter Melody September 3–26, 2026 Opening Reception: Thursday, September 3, 5:30–7:30pm Dolby Chadwick Gallery is pleased to present Some Quieter Melody, an exhibition of recent paintings by San Francisco–based artist Ian Kimmerly, on view throughout September. Confident brushstrokes, constellations of color, and figures rendered through fragments and repetition converge in Kimmerly's latest works, creating mesmerizing, layered compositions whose meanings emerge over time. Kimmerly holds a sustained interest in the intricacies of human connection. A thread of intimate, familiar, and evocative depictions can be traced throughout his practice. In this body of work, he shifts his lens to the ruptures in our bonds, caused by economic and political systems that benefit from division, and to the meaning and beauty we create from our increasing fragmentation. The exhibition title quotes Polish writer and activist Olga Tokarczuk. In her Nobel Lecture, The Tender Narrator, she argues for a “fourth-person” perspective—an antidote to the fragmentation of individual viewpoints—writing that “all things that exist are mutually connected into a single whole, even if the connections between them are not yet known to us.” Kimmerly’s paintings, when looked at with care, can unfold in this way: a range of elements, somehow resonating with each other, revealing deep, intimate connections over time. “Some quieter melody,” in Tokarczuk’s context, refers to the harmony we…