The Radical Middle: Stephen Maine and Christopher Miles

Washington D.C

16 November 2024 - 11 January 2025
Overview

Pazo Fine Art is pleased to announce The Radical Middle, an exhibition featuring the works of Stephen Maine and Christopher Miles. The exhibition will be on view in Washington D.C., at 1932 9th Street NW (enter from 9 ½ Street) from November 16, 2024, through January 11, 2025. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, November 16th, from 5 to 7 PM.

 

Maine and Miles synchronously confine themselves within the interchange of positive and negative, exterior and interior spaces, sublimating tactility in their emerging forms. Their processes indulge in the contradictions inherent in mark-making: each repeated layer responds to those established before it, culminating in a prolonged visual contemplation. The artists thematize the endless vectors of perspective embodied by the spectator, who is compelled to navigate emerging associations, convolutions, and discrepancies in the optical movement between each work.

 

Maine’s nine paintings featured in the exhibit are representative of his evolution in print-making procedures, replacing his previous adoption of carpet underlayment with robustly textured plates of plywood, insulation foam, plaster, glue, acrylic medium, and other miscellaneous studio materials. Miles’ six sculptures highlight his amalgamation of traditional ceramic aesthetics with the tailored constructions of assemblage, grounded in the industrial settings of ceramics manufacturing he experienced throughout his childhood. Both artists foreground color as the foundational optical sensation of their works, interplaying various levels of opacity as an additional visual constraint. In the semi-automatic production of Maine’s canvases—relying on the plate’s role in permitting reproducibility—color chords assigned to each painting serve as primary points of distinction. He reuses each of his plates, endlessly circulating them in the scope of his practice to highlight the imprecision of reproduction and elevate the workings of chance. Miles coats his sculptures in tinted glazes of heterogeneous compositions, materializing differently across external and internal surfaces: the interior glazes are marked by their leaky, dripping protrusions, while the exterior glazes are drier and stiffer, layered over fifty times on a single work. Both artists subvert casual spectatorship of their works, instead inviting what Miles describes as a “close reading,” a call for engagement with the slightest markers of difference, interacting tensions of visual dichotomies, and momentary slips in representation.

 

The Radical Middle refers to the philosophy of mediation through blends of the political left and right, examining overarching structures of political institutions; author Marilyn Ferguson defines it as “not neutral, not middle-of-the-road, but a view of the whole road.” Maine and Miles’ works holistically reflect on intricacies specific to the politics of spectatorship: the limitations of opticality are delineated through triggers of haptic memory, collapsing the distance between the spectator and the visual object.

 

 
Artist Bio
 

Stephen Maine (b. 1958, Hartford, CT) began his academic career by receiving his BFA at Indiana University in 1982 and his MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2014. Maine has been showcased in solo exhibitions at Satchel Projects in New York, NY, Public Private Gallery in Hudson, NY, Hionas Gallery in New York, NY, Furnace/Art on Paper Archive in Falls Village, CT, and Icehouse Project Space in Sharon, CT. His recent group exhibitions include Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, CT, John Molloy Gallery in New York, NY, and Tanja Grunert Gallery in Hudson, NY. Maine has received support from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2000) and Yaddo (2012). Maine’s work has additionally been reviewed in ARTnews, Artcritical, The New Criterion, Dart International, Two Coats of Paint, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. He is a longstanding member of American Abstract Artists and the International Association of Art Critics. He currently lives and works in West Cornwall, Connecticut.


Christopher Miles (b. 1968, Pomona, CA) began his academic career by receiving his BA at UC Santa Barbara in 1991 and his MFA at the University of Southern California in 1994. Miles has been showcased in solo and group exhibitions at various national institutions including ACME Gallery in Boston, MA, Actual Size Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Jason Jacques Gallery in New York, NY, L.A. Louver Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, CA, the Pasadena Museum of California Art in Pasadena, CA, Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, and Torrance Art Museum in Torrance, CA. Miles’ work has additionally been reviewed in ARTLURKER, Artillery, Artweek, Art in America, Ceramics Monthly, the L.A. Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Notes on Looking, Square Cylinder, and Sculpture Magazine. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

 

 
November 16, 2024 – January 11, 2025
 

Opening reception: Saturday, November 16th, 5 - 7 PM

 
PFA - Washington D.C

1932 9th Street NW, #C102, (Enter from 9 1/2 Street), Washington, D.C 20001

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Thursday - Saturday, 11 AM - 6 PM

+1 (571) 315-5279
info@pazofineart.com

Works
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