Michael Reafsnyder in his studio, Los Angeles, CA, 2024.
Michael Reafsnyder (b. 1969 in Orange, CA) received his Master of Fine Arts degree at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 1996 where he studied under Mike Kelley and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.
Reafsnyder has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA; Galería Marta Cervera, Madrid, Spain; Blum and Poe, Santa Monica, CA; Las Vegas Art Museum, NV; Uplands Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; W.C.C.A., Singapore, and elsewhere.
His work has been included in group exhibitions including “Step Into Liquid” (curated by Dave Hickey), Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles; “Los Angeles Ceramic Museum of Art,” ACME, Los Angeles; “Fresh Paint,” Galerie Eugene Lendl, Graz, Austria, “Black Dragon Society,” Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles; and “New Work: Abstract Painting,” Todd Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, among others.
Reafsnyder’s work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Las Vegas Art Museum, NV; Portland Art Museum, OR; Weisman Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN, among others.
The artist lives and works in Southern California.
We are thrilled to return to The Armory Show for the fair's 2023 edition at the Javits Center.
Miles McEnery Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of works by gallery artists at the 2023 edition of EXPO CHICAGO.
Miles McEnery Gallery congratulates Michael Reafsnyder on being awarded a 2022 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.
Michael Reafsnyder's current exhibition reviewed in Air Mail.
The inaugural edition was a surprisingly big success. As year two kicks off, here's what to look for.
Last year, the fledgling new art fair Taipei Dangdai: Art & Ideas made mincemeat of the commonly held belief that it takes a fair a few years to build a solid art world following. The inaugural edition turned out big-name blue-chip galleries, famed global collectors (and Chinese movie stars), and, most importantly, robust sales. Oh, and yes, the fair even had its very own giant inflatable KAWS sculpture to draw in the crowds.
Paraphrasing Dave Hickey, who wrote a great essay that accompanies Michael Reafsnyder's latest catalog for his solo show at Ameringer, McEnery and Yohe, Michael is considered a radical, not so much because of how we look at his paintings, but more because he is concerned with how we look at paintings in general. He is a radical who for many years has revived Abstract Expressionism painterly traditions, in his own way.
The canvases of California-based painter Michael Reafsnyder pulsate with energy. Layers of abstract marks bear the traces of their making as paint is directly applied from the tube, weaving together to create dense, intricate topographies. It’s not always easy to enter the work: one must follow multiple strands of color before a narrative opens up and the viewer is absorbed by the sensual space Reafsnyder offers.
This exhibition brings together recently acquired works to the Barrick Museum and Las Vegas Art Museum collections. Many of the artists included in Recent Acquisitions have ties to the greater Las Vegas valley, helping to form the foundation of a heritage collection of works created in and inspired by the Southern Nevada region. As a cross section of the diverse practices pursued by contemporary artists this exhibition reaffirms the Barrick’s commitment to collecting art of the present. The vast majority of the works will be on display for the first time since entering the Museum’s collections.
Michael Reafsnyder's Floating is exhibited in "Paths and Edges: Celebrating the Five-Year Anniversary of the Escalette Collection" at the Guggenheim Gallery in conjunction with Chapman University. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.
Roy Dowell, Iva Guerorguieva, Julia Haft-Candell, Rachel Lachowicz, Michael Reafsnyder, Jim Richards, Steve Roden, Tessie Whitmore
Opening Reception: Tuesday September 2, 6-9PM Claremont Graduate University 251 E. Tenth Street, Claremont, CA 91711 Gallery Hours: Monday- Friday 10am - 5pm
Ceramics are undergoing a revolution in the contemporary art world - but nowhere more so than in Los Angeles, where clay has a particularly resonant history.
The Las Vegas Art Museum's Collections comes back "Into the Light"
So there it was. Amid the single-serving shrimp cocktails, bite-sized quiche, wine, hugs, polite conversations, photo-ops, artists, writers, gallerists and well-heeled art collectors, lived the one single truth: We've been given another chance.
Through careful negotiation, more that a year of planning and a major revamping of UNLV's Barrick Museum, the partnership between the Las Vegas Art Museum and the university's College of Fine Arts came to fruition Tuesday night at the reception for "Into the Light," featuring a large chunk of the Las Vegas Art Museum's permanent collection.
Michael Reafsnyder emphasizes the dynamic characteristics of acrylic paint with his masterful ability to manipulate the water-based medium in his recent work on display at R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla. He fills the canvas with layers of complex hues and expressive strokes of color that flow through the canvas, forming interesting clusters of colors at the intersections.
Echoing the multi-faceted properties of the paint, Reafsnyder uses multiple sizes of pallet knives and sometimes found objects, “I don’t like cleaning brushes…I use anything but a brush.” Amazingly, he is able to keep the colors from mixing or turning into a muddled brown.
In Michael Reafsnyder’s joyously frenzied paintings, each rectangular picture, with its layers of drips, swirls, daubs, and arcs, in every hue imaginable, was also a map of its own creation. Together with his cacophonous multicolored, biomorphic ceramic sculptures, these works seemed primarily designed to energize their audiences.
For his showy topography, Reafsnyder used a variety of application methods: spreading the paint with a flat edge, allowing it to drip from above, applying it directly from the tube, touching it with his hand (or perhaps his arm), or, while the paint was still sticky, lifting it off the surface. The lush, thick surfaces put one in mind of cake frosting as much as they did Abstract Expressionism. Arguably Gerhard Richter’s spirit was being channeled—and challenged—as was Jackson Pollock’s.
