Michael Childress “HUB”
Hesse Flatow
[Image: Michael Childress "Bridges and Tunnels" (2022)]
This event has ended.
For his exhibition HUB, Childress presents modular canvases from a never before shown body of work entitled Bridges and Tunnels. Consisting of rectangular units that are spaced and stacked vertically in combinations of three or four registers, the series explores languages of minimalism and geometric abstraction as ways to embody and delineate space. Each horizontal bracket forms a kind of grammatical syntax equipped with punctuated voids, bearing likeness to solid and broken lines that encompass trigrams of the I Ching. With his signature staining technique, Childress ushers his viewers across his surfaces through subtle transitions between hues, joining left and right, top to bottom, inward and outward. In Light Blue Lintel, the motif of the bridge comes forward as its symmetrical legs support a continuous stretch above; in Tiny Window, the tunnel takes precedence as concentric fields of color narrow in on a central opening. Depending on one’s vantage point, however, the two forms are also interchangeable. Bridges are shallow tunnels, and tunnels are underground bridges – essentially, two sides of the same coin.
Childress’s interest in how bridges and tunnels serve as conduits extends into the gallery’s architecture. HUB installs eighteen works in a grid spanning 360 degrees around a roughly square room, placing the viewer in a central position like the hub of a wheel. Circles and ovals occur regularly within the artist’s practice, both as an embodiment of centripetal and centrifugal actions and as a means to disrupt the rigid bounds of the square. This open-ended structure is substantiated through multiple combinations of rehangs that will take place throughout the run of the exhibition, which allows for Childress to shift channels and energies in order to achieve various harmonious states.
Michael Childress has had solo exhibitions at New Release, New York, NY; New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France; Lane Meyer Projects, Denver, CO; and Cuevas Tilleard, New York, and been included in group exhibitions at Marvin Gardens, New York, NY; Future Gallery, Berlin, Germany; HESSE FLATOW, New York, NY; Half Gallery, New York, NY; Pray For This Gallery, New York, NY; False Flag, New York, NY; Radiator Arts, New York, NY; among others. He is a recipient of the Leslie-Lohman Museum Queer Artists Fellowship and has completed a residency at AS220 (Providence, RI). Childress earned a BFA from the University of Massachusetts in 2009. He lives and works in Massachusetts and New York
Media
Schedule
from January 06, 2023 to February 18, 2023
Opening Reception on 2023-01-06 from 18:00 to 20:00