MICHAEL REEDY • BURN WITH ME
solo show

Opening: September 6th - 27th, 2019
 

“I have often said I wished I could make a drawing that encapsulated everything that Charlie Chaplin was able to achieve in the film City Lights.” - Michael Reedy

Arch Enemy is proud to present Burn With Me, the new solo collection by Michael Reedy.  In the much anticipated followup to his 2016 AEA solo show Dust & Moonshine, Michael's new pieces take another characteristic deep-dive into themes of life, death, and transcendence.  The Michigan-based artists and draftsman, known for expertly illustrating the duality and often conflicting parts of life and existence like birth and death, doom and perseverance, both in themes and also represented in design choices, merging elements of hyperrealism, illustration, and geometric abstraction within each individual work.

“I often find myself driven by a rather manic preoccupation with the apparent meaninglessness of it all – especially when coupled with our drive to procreate as a means by which to live beyond our own lifetime. The idea of living beyond (beyond our own physical existence) - or our soul/spirit floating away, or the “spilling out” of our insides as a means to live on (and in essence escape death) fascinates me”

These ideas are front and center in the new exhibition. The “vomit organ ghosts” in Headbomb, the “sad sack spirit/ghost” in ‘er and Death of the Maiden, the ghost babies being reborn and sucked in to a blender style death vortex in Burn with Me, are all manifestations of that desire to ‘live' forever.

The name of the show and its title piece Burn With Me comes from a line from a short story by Banana Yoshimoto that has stuck with Michael for over 20 years. ”I bet I go to hell when I die”… This line was whispered by a tragically generous do-gooder to their partner as they were falling asleep.

“The fact that they lived their life in service to others to compensate for their fears surrounding death…and they still felt doomed at every turn, sums up about everything for me, ha!”

At the same time, and at the end of the day, the work is still about finding beauty in simple things.

Burn With Me opens September 6th at Arch Enemy in Philadelphia.

​

click here to email ARCHENEMYARTS@GMAIL.COM with any purchase inquires