Selected Works

Miles McEnery Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles based artist Robert Russell. The artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery is on view 3 July through 23 August 2024 and is accompanied by a fully illustrated digital publication featuring an essay by Andrea Bowers.

Robert Russell has been painting teacups since 2020. Sourcing images from Google, he looks to listings on estate sales and eBay, encapsulating the deaccessioning of beloved family heirlooms in the wake of death. Prior to his latest teacup exhibition, Russell rendered his photorealist subjects as memento mori, stoically posed on dark backdrops in the style of vanitas. 

Russell’s current series abandons strict photorealism for the surreal. Each painting depicts a teacup cascading down from above on unifying sky blue canvases. Capturing his subject suspended in air, the porcelain cups appear featherweight, almost angelic. Interrupting the serenity is the knowledge of the pending moment of when the delicate china meets its fate. 

Growing up Jewish in America, Russell found his family outwardly concealing their identity to homogenize into societal standards. With his Falling Teacups, Andrea Bowers writes that “Russell is illustrating a deeply personal desire to shatter a generational process of assimilation… [He] has found a way to deal with painting as not only an aesthetic process but also a critical practice.”