Rococo Puffs
Tess Michalik

Opening Reception: Friday, November 6th, 5–8 PM
Exhibition Dates: November 6th-28th, 2026

“Rococo Puffs is a show of fantastical floral spaces. Landscapes, design motifs, and floral arrangements in all states of bloom; a memento mori, peak blossom as the zenith of a flower’s short-lived existence. They also reference European textile design of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They borrow the meandering curves and vines of brocaded silks and woven tapestries.

They are made with oil paints, brushes, and palette knives on canvases or panels. Their surface is thick impasto paint that has been put down on the canvas wet into wet, thickly and heavily, twisting and pulling, scraping and burying, and reapplying paint to the substrate. The working process can be sculptural in applying the paint, recording motion with gestures preserved in the marking of the paint.”