M.David and Co. builds on the tradition of Life On Mars Gallery (LOMG). Life On Mars opened in October 2013 and closed in June 2016, when the world was a different place, and when Bushwick was perhaps the last Bohemian scene in New York and one of the painting capitals of the world.

During that time, we had the honor of exhibiting and mounting one-person exhibitions with such brilliant artists as Todd Bienvenu, Farrell Brickhouse, Paul D'Agostino, Daniel John Gadd, Brenda Goodman, Arnold Mesches and Fran O’Neill.

These artists have gone on to great critical acclaim, wider audiences, and representation with some of the finest galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe.

A crucial component of Life On Mars also featured many thematically rigorous group exhibitions, such as “Outside In” and “Back to the Future,” that championed the intergenerational bond between emerging artists (at that time) such as Yevgeniya Baras, EJ Hauser, Matt Phillips, by pairing them with great vernacular artists, such as Thornton Dial, James Castle, The Quilters of Gee's Bend, and Purvis Young, as well as established master painters like Peter Acheson, Katherine Bradford, Bill Jensen, Chris Martin, Joyce Pensato, Amy Sillman and Joan Snyder. These exhibitions were often accompanied by packed and enlivened artist talks.

Life On Mars closed all too soon but briefly reopened as David and Schweitzer Gallery. The gallery then emerged in its current form as M.David and Co. reaffirming its commitment to painting and its continued and crucial relevance of the hand-made in the age of new media and the digital.

M.David and Co. builds on the tradition of LOMG by continuing group exhibitions focusing on the intergenerational relationships between such brilliant young artists as Astrid Dick, Daniel Giordano, Kathryn Hart, Kennedy Yanko, and master artists and vernacular giants such as Thornton Dial, Brenda Goodman, Glenn Goldberg, Lonnie Holley, Helen O’Leary, Judy Pfaff, and Mary T. Smith.

We look forward to our upcoming one and two-person exhibitions, "featuring painters’ painters" such as Len Bellinger, Mary DeVincentis, Astrid Dick, sculptors Daniel John Gadd and Helen O'Leary, and introducing artists from Europe and across the Americas and Canada not previously exhibited in New York.

The world has changed, Bushwick has changed but painting and sculpture remain timeless and primal expressions of humanism that are best communicated by the touch of one's hand.

Michael David, Owner, Director, Curator - M.David & Co 1/1/22

To read more about Life On Mars, please review the links at the end of this page.

"The Life On Mars Gallery, in Bushwick’s 56 Bogart Street building, promises to be “about painters and painting” and “painting’s continued relevance in the age of digital media.” Many galleries make such a claim. Michael David, the founder of Life on Mars, delivers on it, putting himself in harm’s way. As a painter who used to exhibit his own encaustic abstractions at Sidney Janis Gallery and Knoedler, David was poisoned by the gases of his own wax medium. His legs remain partially paralyzed by the exposure.

The specter of painting to the extreme reflects on David’s other history, as a bassist for New York punk bands. Most notably this included an early version of the Plasmatics, an extreme act that was later headlined by the late Wendy O. Williams, a frontwoman known for chain-sawing guitars on stage, blowing up cars, and inviting charges of public indecency. At Life on Mars, David continues to play backup for such female leads, as several expressionistic women have been part of recent group and solo shows, including Katherine Bradford, Joyce Pensato, Amy Sillman, Brenda Goodman, and Fran O’Neill, whose exhibition I wrote about earlier this year."

James Panero - from the New Criterion Gallery Chronicle, May 2015