Seven Sisters celebrates the opening of Michael Cline's Havre de Grace with a reception on Saturday, May 25, 2024, from 2 to 4 PM and a walkthrough at 4 PM. In a series of new paintings, the artist zeroes in on domestic details and overturns the genre of still-lifes to uncover expansiveness in the oft-overlooked.
Cline only knows of Havre de Grace, Maryland, as an unvisited milestone on a road trip. Yet, the name has woven into the artist's imagination the way a crumbling door frame or a lone potted plant might. It sounds like a nice place. That his attention lingers and lilts around the promise of a small town on the eastern seaboard (or an otherwise insignificant detail) speaks to romantic and obscure peculiarities. And an understanding that familiarity can provide a comfort or longing that only the beholder understands.
In Cline's unexpectedly cropped paintings, each depicted item, from empty bottles, piles of socks, and houseplants to relics from another era, carries a symbolic weight that may stir nostalgia or unease. For Cline, the focus is not on projecting memories but on capturing an incidental, fleeting moment through painting. Mundane domesticity mysteriously takes center stage as the inanimate steps into the spotlight.
Throughout Havre de Grace, Cline explores forgotten corners and the textures of our daily lives to revel in the stillness of time passing with palpable solitude. He carefully suspends memories, artifacts, and disquietude with care and attention. The artist's elusive narratives jaunt down the well-trodden stairs of art history and mischievously slide deeper into interior rooms while we, the voyeurs, yearn for entry. In addition to his cabinet full of exceptional painting skills and a velveteen touch, Cline's final magic trick is that while his work brims with oceanic feelings and saudade, he guides us through the ever-slippery past to the mystery of unknown futures. Time stops. Just for a second.
Michael Cline (b.1973, Cape Canaveral, FL, US; lives and works in New York City, NY) studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cline has presented solo exhibitions with Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago; James Fuentes Gallery, New York; Horton Gallery, New York; David Kordansky, Los Angeles; Nino Meir Gallery, Brussels, BE; Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York; and Daniel Reich Gallery, New York. His works have also been included in group exhibitions organized by the Parrish Art Museum, New York; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Rome; Deste Foundation, Athens; David Zwirner, New York; Lehmann Maupin, New York; and Saatchi Gallery, London. Cline’s paintings are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; François Pinault Foundation, Venice; and the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania.
