Mike Childs

Unbuilt Built is an exhibition of new paintings (acrylic on canvas) and drawings (graphite on paper) by The Bronx-based Canadian artist Mike Childs and is his fifth exhibition with the gallery. Drawing inspiration from urban demolition and construction sites, signage, graffiti, late Modernist painting and other sources Childs’s work employs discordant colors, shapes and patterns to explore ideas of space, change and ambiguity.

Through preparatory photographs and sketches of the urban landscape around his studio Childs has developed these patterns, shapes and colors into an abstract language. The resulting compositions exhibit disharmonious colors, disjointed patterns and off kilter organic elements which suggest shifting perspectives and uncertain spaces. Childs’s fascination with this kind of dissected urban visual reference is the main theme within his work. Childs writes, “Abstraction, I believe, can be a reckoning with the constantly changing environment, allowing one to reflect on how as humans we negotiate a chosen space bound by our culturally dictated perspective.”

Mike Childs received his BFA from the University of Guelph, Canada, and an MFA from Florida State University. He is the recipient of several awards including a Pollock-Krasner Grant and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Project Award. His work has been exhibition nationally and internationally. He maintains a studio in The Bronx, NY.