PRESS RELEASE

WE HAVE (HAD) THE TECHNOLOGY
Michael Coughlan

In the Project Room
KIDS OF THE BLACK HOLE
Edgar Bryan, Brad Phillips, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, Adam Ross, Mungo Thomson, Leslie Vance, Tyler Vlahovich, Kent Young

Stalke Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition We Have (Had) the Technology featuring works by Los Angeles-based artist Michael Coughlan. The exhibition includes new paintings, drawings, and pastels and runs until January 8, 2005.

Coughlan uses the codes of modernist art, emphasizing surrealism and the conceptual art of the 1930s. However, these codes are reinterpreted and distorted through his use of pop culture’s iconography, illustrative style, and a wholly personal approach. His latest works also incorporate aspects of his surroundings in Los Angeles, such as abandoned urban landscapes and the specific character of light and decay that permeates them. Rather than directly pastiching a particular work or style, Coughlan uses convention-free strategies from both art history and pop culture to create new, idiosyncratic expressions. The results are both experiential and emotionally nuanced, balancing the humorous with the melancholic.

Coughlan’s imagery evolves through drawings and pen-on-paper studies, creating a process driven by automatic writing. This approach often produces unexpected characters. Each work develops as a dialogue between respect for its individual qualities and an attempt to challenge the conventions within its medium.

We Have (Had) the Technology is accompanied by a catalog with full-color illustrations of all exhibited works and a text by Los Angeles writer Jan Tumlir.

Michael Coughlan holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (1988) and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (1991). He has received a grant from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1996) and has lived in New York and Los Angeles for the past 13 years. His work has been exhibited at Sara Meltzer Gallery in New York, Works on Paper in Los Angeles, and in numerous group shows. His recent exhibitions include Mama’s Boy at White Columns in New York and Eight Artists at 4-F in Los Angeles.

In the Project Room

Michael Coughlan curates the exhibition Kids of the Black Hole, a group show featuring drawings and new works by recognized artists whose work addresses existential and historical questions. The exhibition explores themes of subjectivity and the processing of modernist and postmodernist strategies. The title is borrowed from a song by the 1980s punk band The Adolescents. Both the title and the works in the exhibition convey a youthful energy and existential drama, expressed in both the works and the artists’ presentations. The exhibition also highlights an artistic strategy that is unfinished yet still ongoing — a practice that has become a foundation in contemporary art.

Michael Coughlan

Project Room