Chase Wilson traces moments of hysteria and quietude. Shifting effortlessly between abstraction and an interrupted type of figuration, Wilson’s still life paintings consolidate contradictory sentiments into unfussy, dream-like impressions. Depravity and grace become strange bedfellows; spiritual icons find their counterpart in empty cherry tomato cartons and tabletops. Wilson studies domestic spaces with a flaneur’s casual, energetic wit. He imbues objects one expects to see in motion with a sense of stillness, arresting a type of soft dynamics, a fragile inertia. Wilson’s canvases, at heart, display a loyalty to surface reality. Moments of emptiness are treated as sites of rich eroticism. The cerebral intensity of abstraction is muted by charming knick-knacks and household items. Produced in response to the contemporary erosion of master narratives, these still life paintings find their footing in the grandness of daily life. Against both suspicion and cynicism, Wilson evokes a sense of soulful optimism, embracing a longstanding tradition of artists who dare to dream in public.
Wilson employs peculiar color palettes. Subtle juxtaposition of color produce associative relationships, creating uncanny, earthen tones which are more often hinted at, or sensed, than directly present. Each canvas is adorned with a single layer of paint, lending even the darkest of tones a certain brightness, implied by the white surface underneath – complex negotiations between emotion and sensation are staged on a single dimension, without recourse to saturation or depth. Wilson’s canvases commune with one another, drawing out hidden associations through their placement into pairs and groups. Abstract color grids bounce off depictions of Viking ships, melancholically overturned pieces of furniture contrast with playful representations of Paul Klee’s Angelus Novelus and Beaker from The Muppets. Wilson infuses each still life with a variety of textures and material impressions. Working in the vein of Manet and the French Modernists, he attends to the psychological baggage of contemporary life, placing disparate registers of daily experience into conversation with one another.
Wilson’s paintings examine the ways in which social and political life saturate our experience of the everyday. Each piece functions as an open-ended impression, mapping the affective layers and structures that produce our sense of reality. Wilson applies a gentle salve to the content overload of our moment, treating stillness and empty space as conduits for apprehending the variety of scales that constitute the world as we know it, from the personal to the geo-political. He favors neither seriousness nor irreverence. Historically charged imagery is made to coexist with flashes of adolescent humor, the sum parts of one’s lived experience temporarily squared with one another. In this sense, Wilson’s paintings are testaments to both faith and generosity. No object is without value – the mundane is in direct conversation with the profound. Daily life carries within itself an immense, dramatic value. Wilson depicts the endless complexity of domestic emptiness, producing images which attempt to locate a sense of groundedness within the turbulent excess of contemporary living.
Chase Wilson (b. 1990, Berkeley, CA) received a BFA from Cornell University in 2012 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2018. Recent solo shows include Feb 21 and arrival at the repetition at Foyer-LA in Los Angeles. Americana Extravaganzoid: Table Edge World of False Empire: Window Time Thoughts of the Center Game of Spirit: Seeing into the Negative is his first presentation with M+B. Chase Wilson lives and works in Los Angeles.
Location: M+B Doheny, 470 North Doheny Drive, Los Angeles, California 90048
Show Title: Chase Wilson: Americana Extravaganzoid: Table Edge World of False Empire: Window Time Thoughts of the Center Game of Spirit: Seeing Into the Negative
Exhibition Dates: March 5 – April 2, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5, 6 – 8 pm
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm, and by appointment
Social Media: @mblosangeles @chasewilsonstudio