We are pleased to present Orchid Rain on the Underground, Chris “Daze” Ellis’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. Featuring a new series of paintings, multimedia installation, and a site-specific mural, the exhibition harnesses the passion and spontaneity of the graffiti movement of the 1970s and 80s while demonstrating a thoughtful and meticulous practice honed over the past five decades. While the version of New York City that fostered Daze’s beginnings as a fine artist may feel like a bygone era, the works in this exhibition are evidence of its enduring legacy. By revitalizing that foundational energy for the present moment, Daze affirms the continued relevance of those figures and places, and their profound influence on the creative spirit that persists throughout the city today.

Born in Brooklyn in 1962, Daze became inspired by early graffiti writers like Blade, Lee Quiñones, and PHASE 2 while attending High School of Art and Design in the mid 1970s. As he began to establish his own name as an artist, he was also a frequent visitor to what would become historic landmarks of the city’s nightlife, including the Lit Lounge in the East Village, Danceteria on West 21st Street, and the Mudd Club in Tribeca. These nightclubs, which often doubled as art galleries and performance venues, functioned as generative sites of social and artistic experimentation and part of the driving force behind Daze’s early works. By the early 1980s, he had begun transitioning from tagging subway cars to developing a studio practice that encapsulates the ethos of the city.

Inspired by early 20th-century urban realist artists, including John Sloan of the Ashcan School and Reginald Marsh of the WPA era, Daze’s works honor New York City’s streets and subways as important sites of his creative evolution. Simultaneously 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 train car interiors, tunnels, and stations. In Gem Spa In the 80s, 2025, Daze depicts the now iconic newspaper stand and candy store that once operated on the corner of St. Mark’s Place and Second Avenue. Gem Spa was a central destination and meeting place for members of the city’s subcultures and is referenced by literary figures like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who called it a “nerve center” of the city). Important people from Daze’s life can be found throughout the composition, among them critic and curator Carlo McCormick as well as artist Martin Wong, who both emerge amongst the crowd in the painting’s foreground. In other works, technicolor throngs of flowers ascend from heaps of urban rubble, representing optimism amidst inequality and the beauty that can arise out of destruction. Throughout the exhibition, these varied combinations of tropical flora and local flowers from the artist's home in upstate New York function as poignant memorials to what has been lost and hopeful testaments to the beauty and creativity that can still be found around every corner.

The exhibition will also include a site-specific mural, bringing an aspect of Daze’s practice often relegated to the outdoors into the interior setting of the gallery. Covering the walls of a hallway, the mural gives way to the final room of the gallery, featuring a multimedia installation that transports viewers into a composite scene from the artist’s youth. Combining a light-up dance floor and disco ball, actual subway car seats, and a curated track fusing house, disco, hip-hop, and club music, the installation emphasizes the freedom and creative inspiration that arose from these settings, and their importance to Daze’s personal and artistic development. Combining elements from throughout his career, Orchid Rain on the Underground showcases Daze’s never-ending exploration of daily life in New York City while paying homage to the people and places that comprise its vibrant cultural heartbeat.

Chris “Daze” Ellis (b. 1962) has presented numerous solo exhibitions at Fashion Moda, Bronx, NY;  Palais Liechtenstein, Feldkirch, Austria; Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France; Galleria del Palazzo, Florence, Italy; Fortune Cookie Projects, Singapore; Museum of the City of New York, NY; and P·P·O·W, New York, NY; among others. His work has been included in major group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Semaphore EAST, New York, NY; Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY; Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; New Museum, New York, NY; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; and the Drawing Center, New York, NY; among others. His works belong to the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museum of the City of New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; among others. In 2025, Daze was commissioned by the Museum of the City of New York and the Olayan Group to create Above Ground Midtown: MCNY x DAZE, a large-scale mural project at 550 Madison Avenue.