Schroeder Romero & Shredder Gallery is pleased to invite you to the opening reception for Decline and Fall, a solo show of new works by Michael Waugh on March 3rd from 6 to 8 PM. Decline and Fall features large-scale drawings, video documentation of performance, and a new installation, all of which expose the act of reading as a melancholy act of accumulation – old-fashioned in a world dominated by sound-bytes and disposability. As with Waugh’s previous multi-disciplinary shows, these various works dovetail with each other through their use of language, text and prodigious amounts of labor. In each of the works on view, the hand of the artist (and the personal time it records) absurdly mirrors the vast ideas explored in the texts, namely various iterations of cultural collapse, both overt and implied.

Central to the exhibition are Waugh’s intricate drawings based on his exploration of micrography, a 9th century Jewish calligraphic technique where tiny handwritten words coalesce into representational images – images that in Waugh’s case range from portraits of turn of the century rowers, dogs of various breeds, and grand dynamic landscapes. Originally used to illuminate religious works, here Waugh uses secular texts such as Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and The Accumulation of Capital by Rosa Luxemburg to draw attention to how written language itself has become aestheticized and separated from everyday life. Waugh makes no attempt to summarize or interpret his source texts. By copying them word for word, or reading them verbatim in his performance works, he creates unashamedly monumental works grappling with large, sustained ideas, and his marathon-like labor can barely contain them.

Concurrent with Michael Waugh’s exhibition, the Shredder Gallery will present a show of work by Joseph Cornell, Witold Gordon, Leon Kelly, Louis Marcoussis, Man Ray, titled Les Devins.

Les Devins explores the magical narratives wrought from making ordinary objects extraordinary. On view are rarely seen works by Surrealist masters Joseph Cornell, Witold Gordon, Leon Kelly, and Man Ray, as well as the complete suite of 16 etchings from Louis Marcousis’ Les Devins. Among the works in the exhibition are the watercolor study for Man Ray’s masterpiece Leda and the Swan; Cornell’s playful astronomical inspiration for MoMA’s 1953 Christmas card; and Gordon’s quirky anthropomorphic collages. These artists read and interpret the signs and symbols of everyday occurrences, acting like mysterious soothsayers divining truths.