EXHIBITIONS
Breeze Shapes – March 4 to April 11, 2020
Patterned Recognition – August 31 to September 28, 2016
Michael Russell, photo by Joseph Oxford
“The practice of trying to see more critically is important to the phenomena I choose to re-present. Sorting through information and media on a daily basis is fatiguing. My work embodies a longing for answers and continuity while simultaneously admitting that the process of understanding anything takes time—a currency not readily available for most. It is that which is unknowable that motivates me to refocus my attention and assess the quality of the grasp that I have on the fleeting present. Within a moment of not knowing, viewers may also become aware that they are being asked to read, translate, or simply slow down. But ultimately the works only hint at aspects of contemporary life and acknowledge the matters at hand with ambivalence. If the artworks had voices, I would imagine them to be saying, ‘I see what’s happening out there, and I know you do too.’”
Born in 1985 in Los Angeles, Michael Russell received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from UCLA in 2012 and his Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate University in 2015. His art has been in numerous exhibitions at, among others, Santa Monica Prefecture, Malibu Circa 1990, and Control Room, in Los Angeles. Most recently, New American Paintings and the Hammer Museum’s Graphite Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts have published his work.
Breeze Shapes is Michael Russell’s second solo show at Nancy Toomey Fine Art in San Francisco.
