Steven Charles: First Light

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Steven Charles, sidewalk gas  

glow track pants vehicle rain, 

2019, acrylic, mixed media on  

canvas, 77x105 inches 

NOVEMBER 3 – DECEMBER 30, 2022 

Opening reception Thursday November 3, 6:00 – 8:00 pm 

Steven Charles 

First Light

Marcia Wood Gallery is delighted to announce the first exhibition at the gallery and in Atlanta  by Steven Charles.  

“Abstract painting is the most confusing dilemma I have encountered. This confusion motivates  me,” says Steven Charles, who decided to devote his life to painting at 13 and has been single mindedly pursuing his passion since the mid-1990s.  

“The paintings and the music parallel contemporary culture in that the flow of incident is so  dense that it is difficult to focus upon any one event, which contributes to a sense that  everything is happening at a remove from the present moment. Charles’s process emerges from an obsessive impulse that both frees and compels him to take  as much time as the painting demands, sometimes two to three years.” 

BOMB magazine 

“A self- described “satellite dish,” Charles is receptive and responsive to input. As a result his  works are frenetic, but familiar; content to hover on the brink of total perception. Charles is restless in his approach to art-making. Following the Jasper Johns adage, “Take an  object. Do something to it. Do something else to it,” the artist returns to a single painting again  and again, working across multiple paintings at a time. As a result, the paintings bleed into each  other; a problem arising in one may serve as the solution in another, and vice versa.” GLASSTIRE  

STEVEN CHARLES (b. in 1967 in Birkenhead, England) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree  from the University of North Texas in 1994 and his Master of Fine Arts degree at Temple  University in Rome, Italy in 1996. Charles lives and works in Dallas, Texas. 

Charles has had numerous solo exhibitions including “You and I Are Living Now,” Cris Worley  Gallery, Dallas, TX, “New Paintings,” Ameringer/McEnery/Yohe, New York, NY, “Things that Fell  Out of my Pocket,” Associated Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “Ocean Size,” NOWhere Limited, New  York, NY; “I Don’t Know What My Life To Do With,” Stux Gallery, New York, NY; “The Upstairs  Room” and “Steven Charles: Thirteen Monsters for Lightning Bolt” at Marlborough Chelsea,  New York, NY; and “my life is perfect and I’m always happy,” “crclgogobaroanst,” and “nowhere  fast” at Pierogi 2000 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.  

Group exhibitions include “Rattle & Hummmmmm,” Odetta Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “Tiny Art  Show,” Associated Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY; “Pierogi XX: Twentieth Anniversary  Exhibition at Pierogi,” Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; “Space is the Place,” BravinLee Programs,  New York, NY; “Residue,” Adah Rose Gallery, Kensington, MD; “Brooklyn Boys Go Bowling,”  Theodore:Art, Brooklyn, NY; “Cut Up,” Storefront Gallery, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY; “Piping  Down the Valleys Wild,” Stux Gallery, New York, NY; “There Are No Giants Upstairs,”  Theodore:Art, Brooklyn, NY; and “Open House: Working in Brooklyn,” Brooklyn Museum,  Brooklyn, NY.  

His work has been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, The New York Times, The  Wall Street Journal, and Vice.” 

Charles is the recipient of multiple awards including the New York Foundation for the Arts  (NYFA) Artists’ Fellowship and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.  

For press inquiries, please contact Marcia Wood at marciawoodgallery@gmail.com or 404-827-0030.