Michael St John’s series These Days / The Passions follows on his celebrated Democracy Series. In both series each paintings remain consistently the same demure size -24x30- and share a single central image format. While the sources for Democracy were derived from deliberately diverse media sources these are conversely all faces or icons derived from memorable moments from films - both classic literate cinema and ubiquitous Hollywood entertainments. They exist as frozen images that might be best understood as manifestations of our desire in lockdown times to experience other realities than our overly familiar homes, pets and families. Our minds seek to experience through moving stories made of light personages from other periods, cultures and histories, including murderers, monsters, addicts and otherwise flawed humans. Alternating between easily recognizable fictional characters, masks and in one case an iconic letter, most viewers will be able to identify at least a few sources from their personal film watching experiences. Each painting presents believable portraits of fictional creations whose truth we magically incorporate intro our limited locked down lives.
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About The Artist
St. John has shown his work extensively over the past thirty years in museums, alternative spaces and galleries throughout the United States. Although he’s known primarily for his four exhibitions at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, other notable shows include those at team (gallery, inc.), Karma, NY, Marlborough Contemporary, Edward Cella in LA, CCS Bard, The Rubell Family Collection, The Weatherspoon Art Museum, Andrew Kreps and Feature Inc.. On the heels of his two gallery Los Angeles tour de force at de boer gallery and Pio Pico gallery this will be the artist first solo show in the state of Texas.
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Hours Thursday - Saturday 12-6PM and by appointment, any time or day of the week
Gallery closed for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday November 26th and 27th, for Christmas December 24th and 25th and for New Years December 31 and January 1st
Masks required for entry and audience limited to 8 people at any one time plus staff
Bill Arning Exhibitions
604 West Alabama
Houston, TX 77006
