Michael Lazarus
Untitled no. 10
August 22 – September 28, 2019
Opening August 22, 6 – 8pm

HOLDING Contemporary presents new paintings by Michael Lazarus. Untitled no. 10 opened on Thursday, August 22 from 6–8 pm. The exhibit runs from August 22 through September 28, and gallery hours are 12–5 pm, Thursday through Saturday.

Michael Lazarus’s new series of paintings are absorbing visual contemplations that highlight his interest in concepts of deceleration and slowness. In these recent works, the act of looking is an exchange between artwork and viewer, one that is rewarded with intentional lingering.

The artist’s remarkable surfaces include rich layers of texture and reveal evidence of intensive editing, reworking, additions, subtractions, victories, and losses. Lazarus scrapes away an earlier painting to begin again: obliterating imagery and meticulously rebuilding throughout his process.

Untitled no. 10 highlights the complexity of painting itself and Lazarus includes the confluence of sad, joyful, somber, and funny experiences to create quietly enigmatic portraits that actively engage with the viewer.

Michael Lazarus is an artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has had solo exhibitions at Walter Galleries at San Francisco Art Institute, Fairbanks Gallery at Oregon State University in Corvalis, Feature Inc in New York, and ANP in Antwerp, among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including Andrea Rosen Gallery, MoMA/PS1, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery in Saratoga Springs, NY, Parrish Art Museum in Warer Mill, NY, Las Vegas Museum of Art, NV, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA.

Photos by Mario Gallucci