Transaction presents the work of Mishka Henner and Mike Chavez-Dawson, two Manchester-based artists who interrogate systems of power, belief, and commerce. Their works are often wry critiques and explorations of the languages and myths at the heart of art histories, popular culture, and industrial infrastructures.
For Manchester Contemporary, Henner has produced a number of new original and editioned works from his Sightseeing, Richtered, and Golden Ratio (Cash Paintings) series, including a world premiere of his Seventeen Thousand Seven Hundred and Elevel Dollars painting, the latest in a long line of paintings sold at the values depicted.
Chavez-Dawson is excited to be presenting all new-works including a bespoke commission for art collector Frank Cohen that sees his new ‘Kleckztale Chairs 2, OMTWF FC*, 2022’ with a fabric design produced from four unique text-Rorschach paintings (this will be on display to), new Phantom Works that sees him create a new set of upholstered fabric editions – though here he’s collaborated with the psychic / medium Dr Wilde Leigh to invite the dead artists Leigh Bowery, Otto Dix and Leonora Carrington to haunt the designs with new works from beyond the grave, Anomaly Fountain ‘Yves it alone…’ edition – which sees him return to his ‘Duchamp Ring’ sculpt with a slightly modified design and Yves Klein Blue finish – mounted on a sterling silver ring (sized to collectors wedding ring finger), a limited-edition bookwork and limited-edition essential oil titled: ‘Transaction Blend’.
*One More Time With Feeling! (After Sir Howard Hodgkin for Frank Cohen), 2022
Exhibition Guide
Transaction presents the work of Mishka Henner and Mike Chavez-Dawson, two Manchester-based artists who interrogate systems of power, belief, and commerce. Their works are often wry critiques and explorations of the languages and myths at the heart of art histories, popular culture, and industrial infrastructures.
For Manchester Contemporary, Henner has produced a number of new original and editioned works from his Sightseeing, Richtered, and Golden Ratio (Cash Paintings) series, including a world premiere of his Seventeen Thousand Seven Hundred and Elevel Dollars painting, the latest in a long line of paintings sold at the values depicted.
Chavez-Dawson is excited to be presenting all new-works including a bespoke commission for art collector Frank Cohen that sees his new ‘Kleckztale Chairs 2, OMTWF FC*, 2022’ with a fabric design produced from four unique text-Rorschach paintings (this will be on display to), new Phantom Works that sees him create a new set of upholstered fabric editions – though here he’s collaborated with the psychic / medium Dr Wilde Leigh to invite the dead artists Leigh Bowery, Otto Dix and Leonora Carrington to haunt the designs with new works from beyond the grave, Anomaly Fountain ‘Yves it alone…’ edition – which sees him return to his ‘Duchamp Ring’ sculpt with a slightly modified design and Yves Klein Blue finish – mounted on a sterling silver ring (sized to collectors wedding ring finger), a limited-edition bookwork and limited-edition essential oil titled: ‘Transaction Blend’.
*One More Time With Feeling! (After Sir Howard Hodgkin for Frank Cohen), 2022
Exhibition Guide
For Manchester Contemporary, Henner has produced a number of new original and editioned works from his Sightseeing, Richtered, and Golden Ratio (Cash Paintings) series, including a world premiere of his Seventeen Thousand Seven Hundred and Elevel Dollars painting, the latest in a long line of paintings sold at the values depicted.
Chavez-Dawson is excited to be presenting all new-works including a bespoke commission for art collector Frank Cohen that sees his new ‘Kleckztale Chairs 2, OMTWF FC*, 2022’ with a fabric design produced from four unique text-Rorschach paintings (this will be on display to), new Phantom Works that sees him create a new set of upholstered fabric editions – though here he’s collaborated with the psychic / medium Dr Wilde Leigh to invite the dead artists Leigh Bowery, Otto Dix and Leonora Carrington to haunt the designs with new works from beyond the grave, Anomaly Fountain ‘Yves it alone…’ edition – which sees him return to his ‘Duchamp Ring’ sculpt with a slightly modified design and Yves Klein Blue finish – mounted on a sterling silver ring (sized to collectors wedding ring finger), a limited-edition bookwork and limited-edition essential oil titled: ‘Transaction Blend’.
*One More Time With Feeling! (After Sir Howard Hodgkin for Frank Cohen), 2022
Exhibition Guide
Featured Works
Mishka Henner
Seventeen Thousand Seven Hundred and Eleven Dollars (2022)
Archival pigment on canvas in tray frame, 98x112cm (38.6x44”) | $17,711 / £15,738
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Seventeen Thousand Seven Hundred and Eleven Dollars is Mishka’s twenty-third painting in a series that began on Valentine’s Day in 2014 with a zero dollar painting on a small piece of card. The premise of the Golden Ratio series was very simple; Cash paintings are sold at the values represented and new paintings are made only when the previous ones have sold. The sequence of values is determined by the Fibonacci sequence, also known as the Golden Ratio.
The creation of each piece therefore depends on the sale of the previous one and no single buyer is allowed to buy two paintings. The result is an informal index of the artist’s worth but also a description of his journey through the art world and through life, since the collectors of each painting are listed alongside the works, thereby documenting the artist’s own journey and encounters.
Since 2014, the values have risen from $0 to $17,711. At first, news of the project was only shared by word-of-mouth with friends, family, and only close supporters benefitting from the lower, more affordable values. As the artist travelled from country to country, and exhibition to exhibition, others learnt about the series, leading to an international group of artists, gallerists, curators, and art critics also investing in the paintings.
Mishka Henner
Staring at Venus (2019)
Framed archival pigment print, 70x100cm (27.6x39.4”)
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Staring at Venus continues Mishka Henner’s interrogation of image-making by turning his attention to his own gaze with the use of eye-tracking software. Many artists have described their works as existing only when they are seen and experienced by a viewer and in these works, Henner interprets this idea literally by creating new works through the simple act of looking.
Eye tracking is often used in scientific research, market research, gaming and product design to determine how and where viewers' attention is concentrated. Here, Henner uses the technology to capture his gaze as it travels across a century-old photograph of a 1st Century BC marble statue of the torso of Venus. In this work, only the parts of the image that were observed are visible. In the other works, the size of the circles reflect how long the gaze fixated on an area of the image, while the lines connecting them track the eyes' movement.
The compression of a two-thousand year-old marble sculpture, an early 20th Century photograph, and 21st Century eye-tracking software results in an entirely new form that makes visible the subjectivity of the gaze.
The series was first commissioned and published by the New York Times Magazine in 2019.
Mishka Henner
Staring at the Torso of Venus (2019)
Framed archival pigment print, 40x50cm (15.7x19.7”)
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Mishka Henner
Staring at Venus (2019)
Framed archival pigment print, 50x70cm (19.7x27.6”)
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Mishka Henner
Strength, 1983 + Jugendbildnis, 1988 (2012)
Archival pigment on canvas in tray frame, 62x72cm (24.4x28.3”)
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Artists are always in dialogue with the past, present, and future. And for readers and viewers, the act of interpretation is creative too; we never see or think of images in pure isolation. Images speak to each other, they merge and collide to create new forms and associations far richer than any artist’s intentions.
These were some of the ideas I was playing with when creating Richtered in 2012. At the time, I was reading Richter’s Texts and Ruscha’s Leave Any Information at the Signal. Though on opposing sides of the Iron Curtain, each artist appropriated from the images and language that surrounded them in post-war East Germany and the USA, and each denied any expression of meaning in their work, focusing instead on the sounds and shapes of words and phrases, and on the elusive nature of photographs.
As a reader bouncing between their words and oeuvres, how could one not find new meanings, affinities, and dialogues between the painters’ works? The result isRichtered, in which the word paintings of Ed Ruscha are superimposed onto the blurred photorealist monochromes of Gerhard Richter to create entirely new images, associations and meanings from two old masters.
These were some of the ideas I was playing with when creating Richtered in 2012. At the time, I was reading Richter’s Texts and Ruscha’s Leave Any Information at the Signal. Though on opposing sides of the Iron Curtain, each artist appropriated from the images and language that surrounded them in post-war East Germany and the USA, and each denied any expression of meaning in their work, focusing instead on the sounds and shapes of words and phrases, and on the elusive nature of photographs.
As a reader bouncing between their words and oeuvres, how could one not find new meanings, affinities, and dialogues between the painters’ works? The result isRichtered, in which the word paintings of Ed Ruscha are superimposed onto the blurred photorealist monochromes of Gerhard Richter to create entirely new images, associations and meanings from two old masters.
Mishka Henner
English Drama, 1964 + Jockel, 1967 (2022)
Archival pigment on canvas in tray frame, 60x60cm (23.6x23.6”)
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Mishka Henner
Pay Nothing Until April, 2003 + Himalaja, 1968 (2012)
Framed archival pigment print, 60x74cm (23.6x29.1”)
Edition of 50 | Purchase
Mike Chavez-Dawson
Kleckztale Chairs OMTWF FC 22b (2022)
Sublimation print on 100% Panaz Eco Twill medical grade fabric, ecoupholstery materials, round black rug. 75x60x70cm.
Commissioned edition.
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Cut From The Same Cloth (2022) 14.9x21.3x9cm.
Edition of 21. Detail (2022)
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Mike Chavez-Dawson Dr Wilde Leigh Psychic Medium inviting dead artists Leigh Bowery to haunt the fabrics with new art (2022)
Mike Chavez-Dawson
Cut From The Same Cloth (2022)
14.9x21.3x9cm. Edition of 21
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Phantom Works, Haunted with new work by Otto Dix (2022) Sublimation print on Eco Ruff fabric, upholstery materials, eco-foam and board with Perspex Re hood. 42.5x30.3x10cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Phantom Works, Haunted with new work by Leonora Carrington (2022)
Sublimation print on Eco Ruff fabric, upholstery materials, eco-foam and board with Perspex Re hood. 42.5x30.3x10cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Phantom Works, Haunted with new work by Leigh Bowery (2022)
Sublimation print on Eco Ruff fabric, upholstery materials, eco-foam and board with Perspex Re hood. 42.5x30.3x10cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Text-Rorschach, Frank Cohen (2022)
Archive ink and poster paint on 295gsm acid-free paper in artist’s frame. 58x43.2cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Text-Rorschach, One More Time with Feeling, After Howard Hodgkin for Frank Cohen (2022)
Archive ink and poster paint on 295gsm acid-free paper in artist’s frame. 58x43.2cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Text-Rorschach, Howard Hodgkin’s Signature (2022)
58x43.2cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Text-Rorschach, One More Time With Feeling 2, After Howard Hodgkin for Frank Cohen (2022)
Archive ink and poster paint on 295gsm acid-free paper in artist’s frame. 58x43.2cm
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Mike Chavez-Dawson
Transaction Blend (2022)
Distilled organic Sweet Orange, Patchouli, Bergamot, Ylang Ylang, Frankincense, Lemongrass and a hint of Cinnamon. Edition of 8 increasing by £8 per edition | £124
Chavez-Dawson visualised magnetising and limitless abundant rays of light whilst mixing the 108mls, each bottle contains 8ml (160 drops), and comes in a credit card-sized off-cut of his ‘Kleckztale 2, OMTWF FC, 2022’ text-Rorschach fabric used for creating the Frank Cohen commission.
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About the Artists
Mishka Henner
Mishka's works have appeared in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pinakothek Moderne, Munich, Turner Contemporary, Margate, and are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Centre Pompidou, Paris, University of Salford Art Collection, and the Arts Council Collection in the UK. He received the ICP Infinity Award for Art in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Prize and Prix Pictet.
Mishka's works have appeared in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pinakothek Moderne, Munich, Turner Contemporary, Margate, and are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Centre Pompidou, Paris, University of Salford Art Collection, and the Arts Council Collection in the UK. He received the ICP Infinity Award for Art in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Prize and Prix Pictet.
Mike Chavez-Dawson
Mike has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at Tate Britain, Barbican, ICA, British Art Show 7 at Nottingham Contemporary, ZsONAMACO MEXICO ARTE CONTEMPORANEO 2017, Design Miami, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Home, Castlefield Gallery, and the Grundy Art Gallery. His works are in public collections held by Manchester Art Gallery, Bury Art Museum, the Pod Collective (Coventry). He won the Whitstable Biennale Open in 2008 and was longlisted for Artangel’s 2013 Open and made the top 100.
Mike has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at Tate Britain, Barbican, ICA, British Art Show 7 at Nottingham Contemporary, ZsONAMACO MEXICO ARTE CONTEMPORANEO 2017, Design Miami, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Home, Castlefield Gallery, and the Grundy Art Gallery. His works are in public collections held by Manchester Art Gallery, Bury Art Museum, the Pod Collective (Coventry). He won the Whitstable Biennale Open in 2008 and was longlisted for Artangel’s 2013 Open and made the top 100.
