Michael Reafsnyder
American, b. 1969
Foam Machine
Acrylic on linen
Signed, titled, and dated 2018 to verso. Heavy impasto in ultramarine, bright green and white, spread with palette knife. Ebonized frame.

Provenance: Purchased by Kenneth and Phyllis Langsdorf on August 21st, 2018, through the Miles McEnery Gallery in New York, NY.

Born in Southern California in 1969, Reafsnyder received his MFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena in 1996, where his professors included Mike Kelley and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. Reafsnyder’s paintings evoke the Abstract Expressionist tradition without the stodgy insistence on seriousness.
Instead, his work is filled with vibrant color, energy, and occasionally, humorous motifs that the artist describes as “invitation to an experience of excess and defiant joy.” Layers of acrylic paint are manipulated with a plastic blade (never a brush), recording a layered narrative in candy-like swirls of paint.
Each painting is completed in one sitting, a decision that, as the artist explains, “keeps the painting from looking like a battlefield.” Much like the geologic layers of a cliff face, Reafsnyder’s works are a permanent record of their own making. The energy of each gesture comes through, as does the intentionality of each decision.
Reafsnyder's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at such venues as Miles McEnery Gallery, New York; Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Galeria Marta Cervera, Madrid; Uplands Gallery, Melbourne; Blum and Poe, Los Angeles; and the Las Vegas Art Museum.
His work is housed in numerous collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Las Vegas Art Museum; North Dakota Museum of Art; Progressive Corporation; Harvard University; Portland Museum of Art; and the Weisman Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, amongst others.
With its first solo exhibition of Michael Reafsnyder’s work, the Telluride Gallery invites viewers to experience painting at its freest and most sophisticated, where gesture and color provide a complex and rewarding space for contemplation.
Source: Telluride Gallery
Stretcher: 18 x 15 in. (45.72 x 38.10 cm.), frame: 19 1/2 x 16 1/2 in. (49.53 x 41.91 cm.)