February 25 to March 27, 2025

Link to images from the exhibition
Review: LInk to KUOW 94.9 Public Radio stream
Review: Artdish

The Firefall was a nightly summer-time ritual that began in 1872 and lasted nearly a century in which burning embers from bonfires of red fir bark were pushed over the cliff of Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park into the valley 1,700 feet below. From a distance this produced the spectacular effect of a glowing waterfall. Eventually park rangers decided to stop the practice, not only because of the overwhelming number of visitors the display attracted, but also because it was “not a natural event.” Many of the issues that Michael Schall has been dealing with in his work have to do with our awkward relationship with the natural world and our inability often times to deal with it. The tension between the nature of nature and humans’ need to control or manipulate nature, as in the case of the firefall, inspire him to depict in his drawings “worlds where both futility and potential are celebrated. . . . I want to create images of alternate worlds that resemble our own, but at the same time, are slightly off as well.” In other words, not natural events. Large container ships battle ocean liners in ice floe-filled waters. Glowing orbs illuminate a nocturnal industrial tangle of pipelines and girders. A dense forest swallows up unlucky skiers in its branches. Close inspection of these beautiful and mysterious landscapes reveal drawings that are meticulously executed with hundreds of thousands of graphite marks rife with detail and draftsmanship. “My preference is for rigor, care and substance and that’s what I strive for, right down to the smallest details of my drawings.” This body of work demonstrates a shift for Schall, from airy light drawings to dark heavy ones; from using the white of the paper as space, or an object, to using it as light source itself. The results “shed light on our collective social fears and desires.”

Michael has had a solo exhibitions in 2007 and 2009 at Pierogi New York (New York, NY). His work has been included in groups shows at Urbis Art Center (Manchester, United Kingdom, 2009), Neuberger Museum, (Purchase, NY, 2008), Breda’s Museum (The Netherlands, 2007), Galerie Adler (Frankfurt, Germany, 2006), and the 2005 Center on Contemporary Art Annual (Seattle, WA, 2005), among others. His work was last seen at Platform in the group show Eden’s on Fire in 2008 and is included in McSweeney’s #32 and the upcoming Better of McSweeney’s, Volume 2, due out this winter. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in New York and is the recipient of a 2007–2008 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant.

Image: Remaking the Night Sky 2, 22 x 30 inches, graphite on paper, 2009
Quotes from NY Arts magazine interview with the artist, July/August 2007