16/3/2006
Mike Cockrill
31Grand, New York
Over the Garden Wall. The artist presents a world where children slumber in a dreamscape of tangled trees, falling rivers, crows, foxes, and prowling tigers. His paintings are rich with color and latent imagery.
Over the Garden Wall
31Grand is pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new
paintings and drawings by Mike Cockrill.
In 'Over the Garden Wall' Mike Cockrill presents a world where children
slumber in a dreamscape of tangled trees, falling rivers, crows, foxes, and
prowling tigers. His large, complex paintings are rich with color and latent
imagery - boys hunting with long poles, a princess girl taking flight on a
carousel horse, a sleeping girl on a bed dissolving into a pond teaming with
fish and frogs.
The fears and yearnings of childhood form iconic moments in Cockrill's work
that point to the unspoken truths embedded in storybook fables. Sexual
undercurrents find subtle presentation, as in the tender painting 'Cross My
Heart,' in which a mother places a reprimanding finger on her little boy's
nose. Or, sexuality may rage like bolts of electricity as in 'Electra. '
Here, with subtle washes of paint and pencil marks, Cockrill depicts a
standing female nude fragmenting against a deadpan suburban background and
clutching herself in a moment of almost religious ecstasy - hair forming
ribbons of lightning, arching into the sky.
Mike Cockrill lives and works in Brooklyn and has shown extensively in New
York. His 2005 painting 'Ascension', called a 'camp masterwork' by Steven
Vincent in Art in America, is currently on view at the Forbes Galleries in
the show 'Post MalcomModern.
Opening reception: Friday, March 17, 7-10pm
31Grand
31 Grand Street (Brooklyn) - New York