Michael David: Nighttime with Dreams and Mirrors

19 April - 28 June 2024
  • Michael David

    Nighttime with Dreams and Mirrors

    April 19 - June 28, 2024

     

    Opening Reception: Friday, April 19 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm

    Artist Talk: Saturday, April 20 from 1:00 to 3:00 pm

     

    Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Michael David titled Nighttime with Dreams and Mirrors.

  • Michael David has never been one to look away. Whether in his visual art, his teaching, or his curatorial pursuits, he confronts tasks and challenges head-on, peeking in and poking around only momentarily before digging in, charging along, plowing through. His operative mode is energetic, vigorous, even aggressive, yet it is the consequence of an aggressive, vigorous, energetic curiosity – of a tireless drive to discover, disrupt, and possibly rupture so as to expose anew, reconfigure, and suture. His bullishness of approach is born of a bullishness on creativity and of an unwavering bullishness on, and unrelenting quest for, beauty. The artist’s conviction, in art and life alike, is that by shaking things up and interrupting norms to see what’s left standing, steadfastly, upon their settling, he’ll eventually find something that is, and that he might leave newly, right.

     

    — ‘Introspection, Disruption, Discovery: Michael David’s The Mirror Stage’ by Paul D’Agostino

  • 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 whichemerges 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.

    • Michael David, Marsyas (for Astrid and Daniel), 2023-2024
      Michael David, Marsyas (for Astrid and Daniel), 2023-2024
    • Michael David, Black Vanitas IV, 2024
      Michael David, Black Vanitas IV, 2024
  • This philosophy also materializes in the paintings Black Vanitas IV and No Regrets (For Johns and Mapplethorpe), both composed of black glass, resin, and silicone, without any overt reference to materialistic excess. Opting for a skull’s abstract representation — a memento mori — David prompts us to contemplate the ephemeral over the material. David disrupts the visual plane not just physically but with a masterful precision that subtly incorporates these motifs, confronting our superficial obsessions and steering us toward mortality’s acceptance. Yet, this piece, and the exhibition at large, glimmers with hope, positing that in this recognition and acceptance of transient truths, we may find illumination.
  • About Michael David

    About Michael David

    Abstract painter Michael David is best known for his use of encaustic, a technique that incorporates heated beeswax and pigment, as well as mirrored glass. Considered an inheritor of Abstract Expressionism, David’s abstract work primarily centers on the use of a densely layered surface to facilitate a direct and immediate spiritual experience. He often incorporates religious iconography and symbolism, art historical themes such as the nude, and contemporary politics into his paintings, resulting in a critical dialogue between the layered abstraction of the surface and the integrated representational imagery. Alongside his work on canvas, David has developed a body of studio photography that recreates paintings by Caravaggio, Manet, and Mantegna, among others, in works that confront racism, homophobia, and sexism.

     

    In his ongoing body of work, David constructs his abstract paintings using hundreds of pounds of broken mirror. Through this process, he achieves a complex yet seamless synthesis of his oeuvre, spanning the last four decades. By pushing the boundaries between painting and sculpture, David develops complex narratives, as evidenced in his seminal symbol paintings that incorporated icons such as the Cross, the Swastika, and the Five Point Jewish Star, as well as in his more recent masterworks such as The Inevitable and The End of the World As We Know It.

     

    A Guggenheim Fellow, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Awardee, and a Yaddo and Edward Albee Fellow, Michael David has been exhibiting internationally since 1981, first with the historical Sidney Janis and then with M. Knoedler & Co. Exhibiting widely throughout the United States for forty years, he has been the subject of much historical and curatorial acclaim. His recent solo show “The Mirror Stage” was held at Johnson Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia in 2022.

     

    David’s work is included in many prominent private collections, and permanent public collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, TX; the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Margulies Collection, Miami, FL; and the Edward Albee Foundation, Montauk NY. David was the subject of a one-person exhibition at the Aspen Museum of Art in Aspen, CO.

  • List of Works

    • Michael David, Marsyas (for Astrid and Daniel), 2023-2024
      Michael David, Marsyas (for Astrid and Daniel), 2023-2024
    • Michael David, Black Vanitas IV, 2024
      Michael David, Black Vanitas IV, 2024
    • Michael David, No Regrets (for Johns and Mapplethorpe), 2024
      Michael David, No Regrets (for Johns and Mapplethorpe), 2024
    • Michael David, Bullet Holes in the Night Sky, 2024
      Michael David, Bullet Holes in the Night Sky, 2024
    • Michael David, Self Portrait as an Old and Young Man, 2023-2024
      Michael David, Self Portrait as an Old and Young Man, 2023-2024
    • Michael David, St. Sebastian, 2024
      Michael David, St. Sebastian, 2024
    • Michael David, The Lion in Winter, 2023-2024
      Michael David, The Lion in Winter, 2023-2024
    • Michael David, Gator in the River, 2024
      Michael David, Gator in the River, 2024
    • Michael David, Reclining Vanitas, 2024
      Michael David, Reclining Vanitas, 2024
    • Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below I, 2024
      Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below I, 2024
    • Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below II, 2024
      Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below II, 2024
    • Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below III, 2024
      Michael David, The Heavens Above and the Earth Below III, 2024
    • Michael David, Judgment of the Moon and the Stars, 2023
      Michael David, Judgment of the Moon and the Stars, 2023
    • Michael David, Sex and Candy, 2023
      Michael David, Sex and Candy, 2023