Michael Childress

Pictures of the Floating World

October 16th - November 13th. 2021

MICHAEL CHILDRESS
SOLO EXHIBITION
PICTURES OF THE FLOATING WORLD
SOLO EXHIBITION (PROJECT GALLERY)
EXHIBITION DATES: 16TH OCT 2021 to 13TH NOV 2021
OPENING RECEPTION: SAT, OCT 16TH FROM 6:00 - 9:00 PM
GALLERY HOURS: TUES - SAT / 1 PM - 6 PM
NEW IMAGE ART. 7920 SANTA MONICA BLVD. LOS ANGELES. CA. 90046

New Image Art is pleased to present Pictures of the Floating World, the debut solo exhibition by Michael Childress opening Saturday, October 16th, 2021 from 6 PM to 9 PM. This is Childress’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and with the gallery.

“Pictures of the Floating World” is the translation of “Ukiyo-e,” which is a type of woodblock print made in Japan during the Edo period. Saturated colored skies were a staple feature of the times, which appears throughout Childress' oeuvre. Each painting is sequestered into sections, the upper area acts as the celestial while the lower section acts as the terrestrial. The body of work in this exhibition is a part of a larger extended series Childress started in 2020, which he refers to as Equivalents, after Alfred Steiglitz’s series of ethereal photographs of clouds. In 1922, these images pushed the representational medium into the realm of the abstract. Steiglitz’s technical advancements in creating fluid liminal skies are concurrent to Childress’ process, he obfuscates the forms and colors, which in turn creates a melding of scientific diagrams with otherworldly auras. Each of Childress' paintings stems from both our world and the unknown. The channeling of light, form, and color collide together forging multi-dimensional entities. These visual poetic motifs activate a vibration within the eye, as the viewer visually embeds themselves within the coalescing cataclysmic shapes the weight of gravity sets in and pushes the eye into a telluric current. The particles within the phantasmal ecosystems of color produce a perceptual ambiguity melding psychological interpretation with visually complex algorithms. Geometric color fields bleed into otherworldly landscapes, suggesting quantum systems beyond our immediate reality.

Michael Childress (b.1987, New York), was the recipient of the 2018 Leslie Lohman Museum Queer Artist Fellowship. He has exhibited internationally at Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris and Future Gallery, Berlin as well as nationally, in New York at Half Gallery, New Release, Cuevas Tilleard, Radiator Gallery and False Flag. Childress curated a group exhibition “The Small Exceeds” at New Release in 2017 which was reviewed by Roberta Smith for the New York Times. He received his BFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2009. Childress lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Pictures of the Floating World Artworks

Pictures of the Floating Installation Images