Orchid Rain on the Underground,\u00a0<\/em>Chris \u201cDaze\u201d Ellis\u2019s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The show is on view through April 25, 2026. Featuring a new series of paintings, multimedia installation, and a site-specific mural, the exhibition harnesses the passion and spontaneity of the graffiti movement of the 1970s and 80s while demonstrating a thoughtful and meticulous practice honed over the past five decades. While the version of New York City that fostered Daze\u2019s beginnings as a fine artist may feel like a bygone era, the works in this exhibition\u00a0are evidence of its enduring legacy. By revitalizing that foundational energy for the present moment, Daze affirms the continued relevance of those figures and places, and their profound influence on the creative spirit that persists throughout the city today.\u00a0<\/p>\nBorn in Brooklyn in 1962, Daze became inspired by early graffiti writers like Blade, Lee Qui\u00f1ones, and PHASE 2 while attending High School of Art and Design in the mid 1970s. As he began to establish his own name as an artist, he was also a frequent visitor to what would become historic landmarks of the city\u2019s nightlife, including the Lit Lounge in the East Village, Danceteria on West 21st Street, and the Mudd Club in Tribeca. These nightclubs, which often doubled as art galleries and performance venues, functioned as generative sites of social and artistic experimentation and part of the driving force behind Daze\u2019s early works. By the early 1980s, he had begun transitioning from tagging subway cars to developing a studio practice that encapsulates the ethos of the city.<\/p>\n
Inspired by early 20th-century urban realist artists, including John Sloan of the Ashcan School and Reginald Marsh of the WPA era, Daze\u2019s works honor New York City\u2019s streets and subways as important sites of his creative evolution. Simultaneously influenced by the lyrical abstraction of works by Joan Mitchell and Willem De Kooning, Daze combines gestural swaths of acrylic and spray paint with detailed renderings of train car interiors, tunnels, and stations. In\u00a0Gem Spa In the 80s,<\/em>\u00a02025, Daze depicts the now iconic newspaper stand and candy store that once operated on the corner of St. Mark\u2019s Place and Second Avenue. Gem Spa was a central destination and meeting place for members of the city\u2019s subcultures and is referenced by literary figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who called it a \u201cnerve center\u201d of the city). Important people from Daze\u2019s life can be found throughout the composition, among them critic and curator Carlo McCormick as well as artist Martin Wong, who both emerge amongst the crowd in the painting\u2019s foreground. In other works, technicolor throngs of flowers ascend from heaps of urban rubble, representing optimism amidst inequality and the beauty that can arise out of destruction. Throughout the exhibition, these varied combinations of tropical flora and local flowers from the artist\u2019s home in upstate New York function as poignant memorials to what has been lost and hopeful testaments to the beauty and creativity that can still be found around every corner.<\/p>\nThe exhibition will also include a site-specific mural, bringing an aspect of Daze\u2019s practice often relegated to the outdoors into the interior setting of the gallery. Covering the walls of a hallway, the mural gives way to the final room of the gallery, featuring a multimedia installation that transports viewers into a composite scene from the artist\u2019s youth. Combining a light-up dance floor and disco ball, actual subway car seats, and a curated track fusing house, disco, hip-hop, and club music, the installation emphasizes the freedom and creative inspiration that arose from these settings, and their importance to Daze\u2019s personal and artistic development. Combining elements from throughout his career,\u00a0Orchid Rain on the Underground<\/em>\u00a0showcases Daze\u2019s never-ending exploration of daily life in New York City while paying homage to the people and places that comprise its vibrant cultural heartbeat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n