Two Rooms is proud to present Ways, a solo presentation by Roman de Salvo (b. 1965, San Francisco, CA), a conceptual sculptor who infuses everyday materials, imagery, and language with a unique sense of humor and poetic intrigue. His work often involves energetic phenomena, such as water, wind, fire, and electricity, as well as elements of surprise and audience participation.

In 2012, de Salvo completed a commission for the courtyard of CCAE titled Grape Maze. Upon visiting the site on a hot, dry morning, de Salvo noticed water droplets appearing from the rainwater downspouts of the building. Due to its metal roof, the building is prone to collecting condensation at night when the conditions are right. De Salvo harnessed this previously overlooked natural occurrence by planting grapevines beneath the two downspouts.

His oeuvre includes previous maze works, which he draws on for their visual complexity and ability to engage viewers in playful problem solving. At CCAE, de Salvo created two mazes out of trim boards on the building’s façade that the grapevines could “solve” as they grew. Thirteen years later, the vines have grown around rather than within the maze, inspiring Ways, a new project that re-engages the original work.

For Ways, de Salvo created a series of 5 x 7-inch postcards that visitors can use as “chips” to navigate the maze. Considering the initial impetus of the piece, de Salvo returned to his interest in water flows. Ways is comprised of four types of postcards that each document a mark the artist made in outdoor environments in and around his home city of Reno, Nevada. Each postcard presents a symbol of directionality integrated into offshoots of the city’s watershed.

This is the artist’s second project with Two Rooms. De Salvo’s Fall 2024 exhibition, O Petravia, repurposed his Murals of La Jolla work McCairn, an 18 x 25-foot vinyl mural after its deinstallation. For O Petravia, de Salvo cut and bound the vinyl to form a new indoor work, Keystone. He also used the remains to make a series of one-off postcards, titled Greetings from McCairn, that effectively transformed the stationary billboard into mobile keepsakes.

Ways reflects the artist’s ongoing investigation into natural and human-made systems. In this presentation, de Salvo focuses on water circulation, sites, and signs. His landscape photographs foreground acts of human intervention, translating these gestures into material form through the medium of the postcard. For Other Places Art Fair, de Salvo has brilliantly cannibalized another of his public works into an interactive riddle.