Nighttime with Dreams and Mirrors: Michael David

For his upcoming solo exhibition opening on April 19 at Johnson Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, New York-based artist Michael David will present a continuation of his series The Mirror Stage with Nighttime with Dreams and Mirrors.  This exhibition, whose title is taken from a verse in the poem “Mirrors” by the Argentinean writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, further solidifies the series as a significant evolution in the artist's visual language. David’s innovative and audacious use of materials and iconography — often in specific reference to canonical works and steeped in the broad history of image-making — has long defined his painting practice. However, as he continues to investigate the application of mirrored glass, obsidian, and resin, the physicality of David's process reaches a heightened immediacy. Densely adorned with reflective pieces of glass, including black glass on occasion, David's works emphatically reflect both the artist and the audience, effectively grappling with the concept of existentialism that has informed his nearly four-decade-long career.

“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 offers a venerable observation of our preoccupation with the material, the temporal, and the ephemeral, encapsulating the essence of the 17th-century Dutch genre of vanitas still-life painting. This artistic wave incorporated recognizable objects and symbols of pleasure, wealth, beauty, and power into artworks as a cautionary reminder that the physical trappings of this world are ephemeral. Emphasis remained on the transient nature of human existence, underscoring the fragility of life and advocating for the discovery of true meaning and purpose through knowledge and wisdom. In this context, David’s interaction with the mirror isn’t merely a first-time self-recognition but a profound reacquaintance with his transformed self — a version only accepted by acknowledging the inherent fragility, imperfection, and mortality that life imparts. His mirror-shattering isn’t just a rebellion against personal or existential despair but a visual meditation on the aftermath of life’s tumults — broken bonds, wounded spirits, life’s inherent brittleness, from which emerges through genuine self-reflection, and humility.

These themes perhaps reach their apotheosis in Marsyas (for Astrid and Daniel), the largest work in the exhibition, where David re-imagines Titian’s masterpiece The Flaying of Marsyas, a painting about pain and the ensuing punishment from vanity.  Worked on for over nine months, reassembling thousands of pieces of broken mirror through dozens of iterations, David creates a work where light emerges from the darkness – making manifest the viewer’s reflection inherent to its completion.  This ever-changing reflection actualizes a temporal, unimagined space filled with light, where one becomes a part of something larger than oneself.