FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is proud to present Pictures from the Queen’s Collection, the second gallery solo exhibition of newly Orlando-based artist Michael Tole. This exhibition features eleven paintings created since his debut exhibition at the gallery in 2022, having received the grand prize, solo exhibition award through his inclusion in the 25th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS International Juried Exhibition of Contemporary Art in 2021.

Tole’s purposeful yet comical blending of art historical references with contemporary visual culture was born out of an experience where he examined his pre-teens daughter’s internet content consumption. The influences, design, dress, and behaviors of these global, pop divas in their music videos denoted uncanny sensibilities associated with Romanticism, Baroque, and Rococo. Rendered in his masterful technique in oil on canvas reminiscent of artists from these movements, Tole’s paintings position female protagonists – of all ages, races, and expressions of femininity - in traditional male roles and thwart (rather than welcome) the male gaze. Pictures from the Queen’s Collection will be on view from 10 December 2024 through 8 February 2025 with an opening reception on 4 January 5-9pm and closing reception on 1 February 5-9pm in conjunction with the Arts District New Orleans’ monthly First Saturday Gallery Openings.

Tole discusses the inspiration of his recent work . . .

The new themes of female agency, diversity, and inclusivity were unquestionably positive additions to Western visual culture, yet some of the similarities between Katy Perry and Fragonard left me feeling conflicted about our culture.  After all, it was only a generation ago that many critics called out the Rococo as the exemplar of frivolous and exploitative decadence.  So what does it mean that its aesthetic conventions are now ubiquitous in media, especially media created by and for women?  Since that initial revelation, my research has expanded to include the broader fantasy industrial complex, from Hollywood to Orlando, to advertising and social media.  Through their conflation of art history, mythology, literature, and pop culture, these paintings attempt to sus out the implications of the observable ascendancy of various art historical conventions currently being used in our media landscape.

Pictures from the Queen’s Collection continues exploring these confluences, but with a deeper analysis of how style and tone can alter subject matter, a relationship that has fascinated me since my childhood.  My earliest initiation into the mystical relationship between text and tone, subject and style occurred circa 1987 while carpooling to school in the back seat of a ruby red Dodge Caravan with faux wood side panels.  For the better part of a year my three best friends and I, like blues guitarists bending a note with a wawa pedal, expertly caused the meaning of the adjective “Bad” to oscillate between its stable, centuries old definition into its own antonym by changing nothing but the pitch and tone of how it was pronounced.  That we could turn the signification of the English language on its head using nothing more than inflection was an object lesson in the intoxicating (and useful) art of modulating the literal text of what we said (subject matter) through the prismatic lens of how we said it (style). 

This intersection is fertile, if unstable, ground through which this exhibition explores by applying two historically grounded painting styles (each of which carries distinct, and historically gendered baggage) to contemporary and historical subjects.  To facilitate this, the show is conceived of as a connoisseur’s collection rather than an artist’s oeuvre.  In it, the viewer finds Caravaggisti genre scenes of women mechanics alongside Rococo-esque DIY thirst traps--similar subjects but treated in different styles, thus prompting the viewer to ponder the embedded meaning in those disparate styles.  Two of the show’s pieces are fictionalized history paintings of Hannah Belle (my gender transitioned Hannibal Barca) crossing the Alps into Italy, but the battle scenes are rendered with the contradictorily feminine coded Rococo style, which tends to neutralize the violence into decoration.  This relationship of gendered style to our perceptions of gravitas, or frivolity merits a deeper, conscious consideration. 

Michael Tole is a figurative painter currently living in Orlando, Florida with his wife and two daughters.  Born in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, he graduated from UT Austin with a BFA in painting in 2000.  A year later, he became the youngest artist ever represented by Dallas’ Conduit Gallery where he showed for 15 years.  For the first half of his career, he created photo-based paintings of retail interiors that explored issues of class and the relationship of painting and photography. 

After relocating to Tempe, AZ his work experienced a significant shift to fantastical figurative inventions based on pop culture imagery he has encountered via his two daughters’ taste in music videos, as well as his proximity to the twin capitals of America’s fantasy industrial complex: Hollywood and Las Vegas.  This work attempts to contextualize their brand of Disney-esque hedonism within a broader historical view of Western visual culture.

As fate would have it, he relocated in the summer of 2024 to Orlando, another node of America’s fantasy industrial complex.  Tole’s work has been exhibited nation-wide, in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and New Orleans.  He has won several grants, including the $50,000 Hunting Art Prize, and the Kimbrough Grant.  His work has been reviewed in Art Forum International, San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and Hi-Fructose.com.  

For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on Facebook (@FerraraShowmanGallery), Twitter (@FerraraShowman), and Instagram (@FerraraShowmanGallery) via the hashtags: #MichaelTole, #FerraraShowmanGallery, and #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.