Wardell Milan

David Nolan Gallery is pleased to present Parisian Landscapes, Blue Zenith, an exhibition of new works by Wardell Milan. For his second solo exhibition at the gallery, the artist has created large-scale collages, paintings, and various photo-based works. The term “Blue Zenith” is borrowed from a passage in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1836 essay “Nature” describing “the point in which romance and reality meet,” a concept that echoes and unravels across Milan’s latest body of work.

Characteristically diverse in technique, Milan’s practice is conceptually rooted in photography. His image-making across all media finds its origin in photography, as the artist liberally mines from and elaborates on imagery from major historical figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Mapplethorpe, to undersung creators such as Alvin Baltrop, and to everyday sources such as family photographs and the internet. In his unbiased embrace of a variety of sources, Milan levels out classic distinctions between “high” and “low”, encouraging the viewer to attach equal value to a wide range of imagery.

Works by Wardell Milan (b. 1977) may be found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; UBS Art Collection; Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation, Paris; Hall Art Foundation; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Milan lives and works in New York.