Beggars Blanket

"Beggars Blanket", a new exhibition of paintings and drawings by Michael Berryhill, opens on Friday, May 2 at KANSAS. In his second solo show at the gallery, Berryhill continues to make images that are primarily concerned with the slowing down of visual consumption and the prolonging of looking and thinking. Privileging neither realism nor abstraction - using humor as well as the grotesque - and tranquily hovering somewhere between invention and the observable, the works reveal the ever-changing way one comprehends imagery. Berryhill draws simultaniously on historical and contemporary touchstones, high and low culture, and a sense of distorted normalcy to conjure the image. It is a combination of destabilizing a direct message and directly conveying something that is unclear. Berryhill explains, "I'm thinking mainly about light as a means of activation of the image, or a way to seduce. The way my paintings look is the result of a reliance on invention instead of observation - because I found out what the image is, or I understand it, by making it". As such, the artist's latest work remains an intensive exploration of temporal production and the impossibility of painting, maneuvering his way into meaningful mystery. Accompanying the various scale oil paintings is a vitrine display overflowing with ragged works on paper made both in and outside the studio. The automatic drawings and doodles are important points of entry and source material for the paintings that follow, documenting the artist's oft meandering, unending search for definitive representation. At its core, Berryhill's work functions as a diary of process, an attempt to faithfully translate and record the inner space occupied by a painter during the creation of an image. It is this process that becomes the primary subject beyond the objects described, and in this way the viewer's engagement becomes a shared experience with the author's discovery. Michael Berryhill (b. 1972 El Paso, TX) received his BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and his MFA from Columbia University, New York; he attended the acclaimed Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. Recent exhibitions include KANSAS, New York; Horton Gallery, New York; Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles; Blütenweiss Gallery, Berlin; Okay Mountain and Arthouse, Austin; David Shelton Gallery, Houston; Vox Poluli, Philadelphia; Bull and Ram, New York; David Castillo, Miami and Participant Inc. New York. He was recently awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva Island, Florida and is currently a Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine. Modern Painters named him one of their 25 Artists to Watch in their December 2013 issue. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

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