MICHELLE BLADE: Gathering Into Being

April 25th – June 7th, 2014 (EXTENDED through June 14th)
Opening reception: April 25th, 7-9 pm

Michelle Blade - Song Mind, Acrylic on canvas 36 x 24 inches, 2014

Now let the water represent the world of sensible facts, and let the air above it represent the world of abstract ideas. Both worlds are real, of course, and interact; but they interact only at their boundary, and the locus of everything that lives, and happens to us, so far as full experience goes, is the water. We are like fishes swimming in the sea of sense, bounded above by the superior element, but unable to breathe it pure or penetrate it. We get our oxygen from it, however, we touch it incessantly, now in this part, now in that, and every time we touch it, we turn back into the water with our course re-determined and re-energized. -William James

CULT is pleased to present Gathering into Being, Los Angeles based artist Michelle Blade's first solo show with the gallery. The exhibition features new large and medium scale works on canvas paired with several works on paper.

In Gathering Into Being, Blade has shaped an ethereal world, charged with symbolism, where abstract and figurative forms suggest relationships between the material and the immaterial. Using layers of swirling inks and a palette of warm natural hues Blade explores painting as a compression of time and a tool for weaving mythologies. Leaving pockets of the canvas raw, Blade renders movement and space between the amorphous bulbous shapes, the curves of figure and portals into landscape. Blade compounds the past, present and future into mystical tapestries woven from iconographies of contact dancers, book covers, landscapes, abstract sculptures, calendars and ancient patterns. Inspired by mysticism, existentialism, occultism, and eschatology her work aims to visually synthesize various ways of understanding the world.

Michelle Blade's practice is cross-disciplinary in nature, encompassing painting, sculpture, installation and performance. In past bodies of work Blade has found inspiration in bygone eras of utopian promise and political social ideals. Here, pieces such as Women and Fiction, Hourglass and To Paint is to Love Again pay particular attention to the roles women played in the formation of modernist theory- particularly in relation to questions of identity and women’s work. These paintings, made while pregnant with her first child, each act as a metronome within the exhibition, representing the distance between unique and successive steps in her creative life and practice.

Blade has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Center for Contemporary Arts-Santa Fe, Carter and Citizen-Los Angeles, Jack Hanley-San Francisco and Western Exhibitions-Chicago. She is a 2007 recipient of the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship, a 2X2 Pro Arts Grant, an Alternative Exposure SOEX Grant, and was a 2011 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Michelle Blade - Women and Fiction, Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - The Sea of Sense, Acrylic on canvas 46 x 40 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - The Finder’s Tapestry, Acrylic on canvas 46 x 40 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Thank You Fall, Acrylic on canvas 46 x 40 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - To Paint is to Love Again, Acrylic on paper, 2014
Michelle Blade - Psychedelic Toast, Acrylic on paper, 2013
Michelle Blade - Night Made Us, Acrylic on paper, 2013
Michelle Blade - Joshua Tree, Acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Into the Abyss, Acrylic on paper, 2013
Michelle Blade - Entrance, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 46 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Elysian Palms, Acrylic on canvas 24 x 22 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Dusted, Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - On the Line, Acrylic on canvas 40 x 46 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Hourglass, Acrylic on canvas 60 x 46 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - This Year’s Calendar, Acrylic on canvas 46 x 40 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Heavy Water, Acrylic on canvas 48 x 36 inches, 2014
Michelle Blade - Between, Acrylic on canvas 20 x 16 inches, 2014

Current

CULT TURNS 10
10 Year Anniversary Exhibition
January 18 - March 2, 2024

Past

Terri Loewenthal
Mountain Goat Mountain

September 15 – November 18, 2023

Time is a Tangled Web: Mary Fernando Conrad, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, Tyler Cross, Zhivago Duncan, Jean Isamu Nagai, Rachel Kaye, Ruth Charlotte Kneass at CULT Bureau, Oakland
September 28 - December 16, 2023

Last Light: Luz Carabaño, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, and Aidan Koch
June 23 - August 26, 2023

ECHO ECHO: Rachel Bridges and Ivan Bridges at CULT Bureau, Oakland
March 2 - August 5, 2023

Two Handfuls Of Silver Dust: Rhonda Holberton
April 27 - June 17, 2023

LEGACY: Binta Ayofemi, Adrian L. Burrell, Rachel Bridges, Ivan Bridges, Masako Miki, and Jean Isamu Nagai
January 18 - April 1, 2023

ZHIVAGO DUNCAN: Measuring Consciousness
September 15 - December 10, 2022

CULT Bureau: Gaze Interrupted
September 17 - November 19, 2022

AMY NATHAN: Slipknot Loophole
May 14 - August 26, 2022

Rebekah Goldstein: Welcome Home Stranger
March 19 - May 7, 2022

Sapiens / Stories at CULT Bureau
November 10, 2021 - April 30, 2022

Physics & Fiction
January 20 - March 12, 2022

Chris Fallon: Irresistible Deception
October 15 - December 18, 2021

Sapiens / Stories on 8-Bridges
October 7 - November 3, 2021

Masako Miki: New Mythologies
June 16 - October 12, 2021

Tales of Metamorphosis: Rebekah Goldstein, James Perkins, and Amy Nathan
June 3 - 30, 2021

Janus II - CULT's 7 Year Anniversary Exhibition
April 9 - May 20, 2021

Troy Chew: Yadadamean
October 17 - December 12, 2020

We’re all in this together
August 14 - October 10, 2020

Beyond Words
June 26 - August 29, 2020

Ritual of Succession
January 10 - March 28, 2020

Record of Succession at fused space
January 13 - March 27, 2020

AMY NATHAN: Glyph Slipper
September 13 - December 7, 2019

FEMALE TROUBLE 2
June 28 - August 3, 2019

RUXUE ZHANG
April 20 - June 15, 2019

MASAKO MIKI: Shapeshifters
January 12 - March 23, 2019

JASKO BEGOVIC (SKO HABIBI): HUMAN_E.T.
November 30 - December 14, 2019

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: See You On The Flipside
September 8 - November 25, 2018

FEMALE TROUBLE
June 9 - July 28, 2018

TERRI LOEWENTHAL: Psychscapes
March 2 - May 19, 2018

VECINOS
October 27, 2017 - January 20, 2018

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life
January 10 – March 4, 2017

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Release Me
October 21 - December 10, 2016

NO SHOW MUSEUM: Yves Klein, Maria Eichhorn, Daniel Knorr, Etc.
One Night Only: Monday, October 17, 2016

DESIRÉE HOLMAN: Selected Works
September 17 - October 8, 2016

SHE MOONAGE DAYDREAM:
Facundo Argañaraz, Leah Guadagnoli, Desirée Holman, Kara Joslyn, Max Maslansky, Liz Robb, Tamra Seal, Emily Weiner, & Cate White

July 16 - August 20, 2016

PABLO DÁVILA: Ladies & Gentlemen,
We Are Floating In Space

May 13 - July 9, 2016

MASAKO MIKI: Conversations with Fox, Feather, and Ghost
March 4 - April 30, 2016

SUZY POLING: Total Internal Reflection
January 15 - February 27, 2016

DAN GLUIBIZZI: You Don’t Have to be Alone Tonight
November 6 – December 19, 2015

FRANCESCO IGORY DEIANA: Haptic Render
September 11- October 31, 2015

SEXXXITECTURE: Daniel Gerwin, Rebekah Goldstein, Roman Liška, Max Maslansky, May Wilson & Jake Ziemann
July 1 - August 1, 2015

ADAM SORENSEN: In Situ
May 1 - June 27, 2015

KLARA KÄLLSTRÖM & THOBIAS FÄLDT: Village / High Hills
February 27 - April 25, 2015

PRINCE RAMA: How To Live Forever
January 25 – February 21, 2015

JOSEPH DUMBACHER & JOHN DUMBACHER: Divert (Out of Line)
November 7, 2014 – January 16, 2015

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Passenger
September 12 – November 1, 2014

A PATTERN LANGUAGE: Michelle Grabner, Angie Wilson & Lena Wolff
June 20 - July 19, 2014

MICHELLE BLADE: Gathering Into Being
April 25th – June 7th, 2014

MIGUEL ARZABE: /*Reject Algorithms*/
March 7 – April 19, 2014

JACQUELINE KIYOMI GORDON: Drawings
March 7 – April 19, 2014

FRITZ CHESNUT: Purr Valley
& Rhonda Holberton

January 10 - February 22, 2014

UNSEEN: Miya Ando, Miguel Arzabe, Chris Duncan, Klea Mckenna & Dean Smith
November 10 - December 21, 2013

Past Off-Site Exhibitions

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life 2
April 7 - May 26, 2018

LAS COSAS QUE PINTAN / PAINTING IN AN EXPANSIVE FIELD
Works by Miguel Arzabe & Juan Sorrentino

April 9 – May 17, 2015

EBB: Gina Borg and Chris Russell at Loczi Design
December 10, 2014