PPOW are happy to current Orchid Rain on the Underground, Chris “Daze” Ellis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The present is on view by way of April 25, 2026. That includes a brand new sequence of work, multimedia set up, and a site-specific mural, the exhibition harnesses the fervour and spontaneity of the graffiti motion of the Seventies and 80s whereas demonstrating a considerate and meticulous follow honed over the previous 5 a long time. Whereas the model of New York Metropolis that fostered Daze’s beginnings as a advantageous artist might really feel like a bygone period, the works on this exhibition are proof of its enduring legacy. By revitalizing that foundational vitality for the current second, Daze affirms the continued relevance of these figures and locations, and their profound affect on the artistic spirit that persists all through the town in the present day.
Born in Brooklyn in 1962, Daze grew to become impressed by early graffiti writers like Blade, Lee Quiñones, and PHASE 2 whereas attending Excessive College of Artwork and Design within the mid Seventies. As he started to ascertain his personal identify as an artist, he was additionally a frequent customer to what would develop into historic landmarks of the town’s nightlife, together with the Lit Lounge within the East Village, Danceteria on West twenty first Road, and the Mudd Membership in Tribeca. These nightclubs, which frequently doubled as artwork galleries and efficiency venues, functioned as generative websites of social and creative experimentation and a part of the driving pressure behind Daze’s early works. By the early Nineteen Eighties, he had begun transitioning from tagging subway vehicles to growing a studio follow that encapsulates the ethos of the town.
Impressed by early Twentieth-century city realist artists, together with John Sloan of the Ashcan College and Reginald Marsh of the WPA period, Daze’s works honor New York Metropolis’s streets and subways as necessary websites of his artistic evolution. Concurrently 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 prepare automotive interiors, tunnels, and stations. In Gem Spa Within the 80s, 2025, Daze depicts the now iconic newspaper stand and sweet retailer that after operated on the nook of St. Mark’s Place and Second Avenue. Gem Spa was a central vacation spot and assembly place for members of the town’s subcultures and is referenced by literary figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who referred to as it a “nerve heart” of the town). Necessary individuals from Daze’s life could be discovered all through the composition, amongst them critic and curator Carlo McCormick in addition to artist Martin Wong, who each emerge amongst the gang within the portray’s foreground. In different works, technicolor throngs of flowers ascend from heaps of city rubble, representing optimism amidst inequality and the sweetness that may come up out of destruction. All through the exhibition, these diverse combos of tropical flora and native flowers from the artist’s dwelling in upstate New York perform as poignant memorials to what has been misplaced and hopeful testaments to the sweetness and creativity that may nonetheless be discovered round each nook.
The exhibition can even embody a site-specific mural, bringing a side of Daze’s follow typically relegated to the outside into the inside setting of the gallery. Protecting the partitions of a hallway, the mural offers solution to the ultimate room of the gallery, that includes a multimedia set up that transports viewers right into a composite scene from the artist’s youth. Combining a light-up dance flooring and disco ball, precise subway automotive seats, and a curated observe fusing home, disco, hip-hop, and membership music, the set up emphasizes the liberty and artistic inspiration that arose from these settings, and their significance to Daze’s private and creative growth. Combining components from all through his profession, Orchid Rain on the Underground showcases Daze’s endless exploration of every day life in New York Metropolis whereas paying homage to the individuals and locations that comprise its vibrant cultural heartbeat.
