Review of exhibit featuring work of Rafael Francisco Salas published

A review of Professor of Art Rafael Francisco Salas’ recent exhibit was published May 9 on Shepard Express, a Milwaukee publication. “Cruces|Crossroads” was on view at Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art through May 13.

The exhibition, the reviewer writes, “places us on the verge of several intersections: of two unique artists crossing paths in a single exhibition space, of their lived experiences, and of the artistic histories their work explores. The art of Herman Aguirre Martinez and Rafael Francisco Salas, both of Spanish-American heritage, offer unique visions that pay homage to everything from memorials to victims of inner-city violence in Martinez’s case, to rural Americana and agrarian labor in Salas’s work. The traffic at the crossroads of these unique points-of-view produces more than a few extraordinary pileups.”

The review concludes, “The show contains many of these moments of poetic contrast and charged interplay. It’s a well paired exhibition that doesn’t require forced collisions, only intersections full of moving stories that produce natural impacts.”

(Photo: “Prize Cake” (2022), by Rafael Francisco Salas)