Petzel Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Rodney McMillian. The exhibition, titled Recirculating Goods, will inaugurate Petzel’s newly expanded Upper East Side gallery, located at 35 East 67th Street. On view from February 27 to May 2, the show marks McMillian’s first exhibition with Petzel, and his first solo show in New York since 2012.

“I’m excited to join Petzel,” says McMillian, who is coming on board the gallery’s roster this winter. “I’ve followed the program for many years and I’m looking forward to being a part of the conversations emerging from there.”

For his debut at Petzel, McMillian will show paintings which further an ongoing conversation about class and ideals that have informed American landscape painting. These works are made primarily on blankets, sometimes with clear representations of a landscape. The objects, in some ways, point to shared spaces in that the afghans or crocheted objects were handmade and can be found in dens, kitchens or bedrooms. They are often personal items which are passed down between generations or given as gifts. However, in this case, some of the objects were purchased from non-profit retail stores. These paintings reflect on the different systems of exchange they exist in, and their relation to the histories—personal, national and art historical—which are evoked.

The show also serves as the unveiling of Petzel’s second floor addition to the uptown gallery. Now occupying both the parlor and third floors of the 35 East 67th Street townhouse, the parlor floor will provide an opportunity to enhance the gallery’s program with exhibitions catered to the nature of space, while the third floor (which the gallery opened in 2015) will serve mainly as a private viewing room for special exhibitions and secondary market works going forward.

Rodney McMillian lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. McMillian explores the complex and fraught connections between history and contemporary culture, not only as they are expressed in American politics, but also as they are manifest in American modernist art traditions. Aspects of his work negotiates between the body of a political nature and the politic of a bodily nature.