Michael Berryhill's 'Beggars Blanket' at Kansas Gallery explores ambiguous imagery with art historical nods

Michael Berryhill presented nine new paintings and a vitrine of drawings in his exhibition 'Beggars Blanket' at Kansas Gallery from May 2 to June 14, 2014. Located at 59 Franklin Street in New York City, the show featured works like 'Saturn n Son,' which references both the 1970s sitcom 'Sanford and Son' and Francisco Goya's 'Saturn Devouring His Son.' Berryhill's paintings employ expensive thick-weave linen and a halftone-like layering process, creating surfaces with fuzzy colors and figure-ground inversions. The artist nods to art historical figures including Goya, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Pierre Bonnard, as well as contemporary painter Dana Schutz. Works such as 'Long Long, Gone Gone' depict ambiguous imagery—a longhaired figure with a parrot on the shoulder—where backgrounds could be interpreted as sky or sea. The exhibition title plays on the 1968 Rolling Stones album 'Beggar's Banquet,' replacing 'banquet' with 'blanket.' Berryhill's theatrical presentation uses proscenium-like verticals and a shallow horizontal strip to stage each scene. The paintings challenge viewers with visual misreadings and multiple meanings, requiring sustained attention to parse partial imagery.