Opening Reception: Thursday, March 21, 6 – 8 pm

A catalogue with an essay by Max Kozloff will be available.

Please join us for a gallery talk and book signing with the artist to celebrate the publication of The Pittsburgh Poem: Thursday, April 18, 6 pm
Please RSVP to mbowers@dcmooregallery before April 15

DC Moore Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition of the work of Duane Michals, The Painted Photograph, which focuses on his current series of hand-painted tintypes (2011 – 2013). Using 19th-century collodion prints on brown or black lacquered iron as his surface, Michals enriches the original images with oil paint, altering but not entirely obscuring the sitters’ features. Drawing on the principals of early photography and modern painting, especially Surrealism, Michals unites the two disciplines and explores the uncharted territory he identifies between photography and painting. Each 19th-century image is playfully rejuvenated by the addition of vibrant color and the artist’s witty allusions to visionaries such as Picasso and Picabia. In this way, Michals draws our attention to the discrepancy between a popular medium that required little skill—the tintype—and the work of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

A renowned innovator, Michals pushes the limits of photography. In past bodies of work, he has achieved this first by presenting his images in series, at times narrated with text scrawled directly on the print, and then further by embracing each imperfection. In this new work, Michals modifies the images of amateur journeymen, emphasizing the “found object” quality of these portraits of the working class by floating each tintype in spare frames to expose their irregular edges. Michals questions what he describes as “the museum photograph,” or large-format photography, with his small-scale and intimate images. Combining antique, personal objects with hand-painted abstract elements, Michals examines his favorite themes: memory, mortality, love, and loss. The results are curious, humorous, affectionate, and provocative.

Also included in the exhibition are Michals’ “deconstructed” photographs, in which the artist eludes photography’s single, decisive moment by digitally transforming one image into a series. A selection of Michals’ painted photographs from the late 1970s and early 80s will also be on view. Like Michals’ seminal photo sequences, the works in this exhibition draw on personal memory and evoke a surreal sense of fantasy.

Born and raised in McKeesport, PA, Michals received his undergraduate degree from the University of Denver. He served in the army during the Korean War and in the mid-1960s moved to New York, where he studied graphic design and worked as an art director and designer. By the 1960s, Michals was exhibiting regularly in New York, where he still lives.