July 31 - September 26,2021
From RULE Gallery: "RULE Gallery is pleased to debut Hard in the Paint, an exhibition of new work by Mikey Yates at our Marfa, TX, location. This will be the artist’s first solo show at the gallery. Hard in the Paint is a new collection of paintings and drawings by Mikey Yates that brings together an array of earnest portraiture and poignant visual memoir. Sampling the people, places, and experiences that have filled his life, Yates assembles intricate compositions that mimic the mosaic of his multicultural existence as a Filipino-American child of an itinerant overseas military family. Vivid impressions of setting and character permeate the work and carry on a fluent conversation vis-à-vis the “the stories places tell about people and the stories people tell about places (Yates).” Sketches of friends and family, old photo albums, and Yate’s own imaginative re-creations provide the source material for his multi-faceted paintings. While his smaller pieces often portray single figures abstracted from observational drawings, his larger works are constructed like a movie montage, often fusing multiple scenes and narratives to create a condensed tableau of space and time that is unapologetically maximalist. Saturated hues, crepuscular lighting and lapidary use of shape and color combine to form a singular mood akin to fragmented light through stained glass. In an effort to capture the “unnaturalness” of growing up amidst a militarized backdrop in the Bavarian countryside, Yates populates many of his paintings with the relics of his youth. In Billy’s Dream and We Got Next, what for Yates and other military children was a natural assimilation of habitat reads as an upending of innocence as an Army milk carton casts its shadow on an elementary school drawing and Humvee lights bear down on the twilight of childhood hoop dreams. Fleeting moments of intimacy and vulnerability brush up against the strictures of military family life, revealing how our surroundings, for better or worse, help construct our deeply internalized notions of identity. Mikey Yates (b. 1992) is a painter born in Sulzbach Rosenberg, Germany. He grew up moving from place to place with his family of six, his parents both serving time in the military. Yates has a BFA from Missouri State University and is a recent MFA graduate from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Mikey has been featured in Artmaze mag, BOOOOOOOM!, YNGSPC & Friend of the Artist, and featured in the MFA annual issue of New American Paintings, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody. His work has been recently exhibited internationally in London, UK, and Leticia, Colombia, and nationally in TX, MO, OH, D.C. and CO. In addition to receiving numerous scholarships and grants, Yates was accepted to several prestigious artist residencies in 2020, including Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency (EMAR), Troy, NY; Ox-Bow, Leroy Nieman Summer Fellow, Saugatuck, MI; and ACRE Residency, Steuben, WI; but, postponements secondary to the COVID-19 pandemic left him unable to attend. RULE Gallery, founded in 1991, has locations in Denver, CO and Marfa, TX. RULE represents emerging and mid-career contemporary artists and artist estates, with a focus on fostering investigative art practices while developing artists’ long-term careers. Outside their robust in-house exhibition schedule, RULE coordinates programming in prominent institutions and non-traditional settings, expanding community engagement with the work. In addition, the gallery actively endeavors to bring greater recognition of the region’s historic art movements to a broader audience."
Reception: July 31, 2021 | 5-7 pm
RULE Gallery (Marfa)
204 E. San Antonio St
Marfa, Texas 79843
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