THE PAST WILL FAIL YOU Exhibition Opening

The Past Will Fail You is multi-media artist Edward Mills‘ artistic U.S. debut. Born and raised in the United States, Mills has lived in Paris, France for the last two decades. Since 2019, he has exhibited throughout Paris and elsewhere in France. Working between drawing, painting and sculpture, his organic style combines a form of surrealist automatism with physically demanding, machine-like outputs.

The exhibition and residency explore the destruction of the self as a necessary part of growth and self-actualization. The public is invited to view the artist at work as he explores space beyond that with which he is familiar. This process, on view during the exhibition and residency, involves the artist’s preparation for and real-time dialogue with an interactive sculpture entitled “The Cube” – a conceptual device representing whoever interacts with it. Using the interplay experience with the Cube throughout the exhibition, the artist collects and codifies discoveries into an original artwork created entirely during the residency.

On specific occasions, the artist will also invite the public to participate in their self-discovery by engaging with The Cube, bringing their frontiers and universes beyond which they wish to explore.

Call for Participation

During the upcoming Artist Residency, The Past Will Fail You, at 836M, an art organization with a gallery space in San Francisco, the invited artist proposes several different ways to participate in an artistic process involving a form of play with a sculpture entitled The Cube. If you would like to receive more information about this unique opportunity, please write to [email protected] and [email protected] with the subject: Participate TPWFY.

is an American artist living in Paris for the past 19 years. His drawings, paintings, and sculptures have been exhibited at Galerie D. and Galerie Belle/Beau, among others.

Mills is an interrogator of the glorious and abject, producing work to reify the frontier between detailed craftsmanship and the unknown – the very place where invention, storytelling, and mythology are born – to provide meaning where there is none. His typographic and organic drawing style combines a form of surrealist automatism with physically demanding, machine-like outputs.

Mills creates sculptures simultaneously with his drawings and paintings to help himself and spectators visualize abstraction.

Photo credit: Ben Hassett

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

836M Gallery, 836 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, United States