Jupiter Contemporary has expanded to a new location steps away from its current space in the Normandy Isles neighborhood of Miami Beach, more than doubling its size and enabling the presentation of large-scale works and installations.
For its inaugural exhibition at this new location, Jupiter are presenting Set, a solo show by Los Angeles-based artist Travis Fish.
Fish’s practice is most simply described as one driven by fandom. A devout listener of the American hip-hop trio Migos, he started out making portraits of its three members—Offset, Quavo, and Takeoff—in 2018. This became a repetitive and one might even say obsessive process: scouring social media fan pages and the internet for new images of the group, he would paint one member after the other on repeat. To do so, Fish works on the floor, bouncing across his canvases, rendering each member’s visage with the quick fluid movements of his extra wide brushstrokes in watered-down acrylic.
Known to unequivocally declare that Migos is “the greatest group of all time,” Fish was, however, always warned that he would not want to meet his idols in person—that doing so would dispel the mystery that enables fans to declare their unwavering love and admiration—but this hypothesis proved false. In 2019, at a shoe store in New York, Fish first met Offset’s mother, who upon seeing his paintings introduced him to Offset. This meeting, along with Offset’s first solo album, Father of 4, served as the catalyst for shifting Fish’s focus from all three Migos members to just one. Not only through portraits but also by way of fashion, Fish would paint the jackets, sweaters, and t-shirts worn by his favorite band members.
The fast fashion featured in these paintings also happened to mirror the fast-paced painting method
employed by Fish. Though Fish’s practice has become primarily fashion-focused, Offset has remained a constant muse and source of inspiration and adoration.
Set consequently serves as a riff on Fish’s obsession with Offset, featuring works created between 2018 and 2022 that picture a world of one, the veritable star at the center of this fan’s orbit. Monumentally scaled up to ten by fifteen feet, paintings such as Offset/Raf Simons (2018) articulate quite literally just how large Offset has loomed in Fish’s world.
Travis Fish, Set, Jupiter Contemporary, November 28th – December 31st, 2022, 1217 71st Street, Miami Beach, FL 33141
About the artist
Travis Fish (b.1989, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. His paintings have been included in exhibitions at Gana Art, Seoul; Alex Duve, Berlin; Carl Kostyál, Stockholm; M BuildingWynwood Art District, Miami; Y2K group, New York; and Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton; among others. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
