SF/Arts Curator Insight

Marking 10 years since Rex Ray's death at 58, this career-spanning retrospective revives -- in riotous color -- the life and work of a San Francisco icon. Arriving in SF at the start of the AIDS crisis, Ray quietly built a career as a graphic designer, while becoming involved in local LGBTQ+ politics and culture. Seeking respite from the computer essential to his successful design business, Ray turned to paper, paint, X-Acto blades, and glue in the early '90s, producing hundreds of ecstatic collages. Regarding this burst of creative energy, Ray explained, "It wasn't until people started getting healthy and surviving AIDS that I was able to let all of my color burst out. It was that abrupt. Like queer lives blooming in the face of adversity."