ILY2 is proud to announce Love, Light and the Thrill of Imminent Distraction, an exhibition of new work by Morgan Buck. This is the artist’s debut solo show with the gallery, following his participation in the gallery’s recent group show I am a city of bones, and ILY2’s presentation of his work at NADA Miami 2023. The exhibition runs May 3 - June 21, 2025. An opening reception with the artist will be held from 2 - 4pm on Saturday, May 3, 2025.

Morgan Buck aggregates and alters found images culled from the virtual firehose of some of the weirder corners of the internet, pop cyberculture and social media to produce his airbrushed paintings. Excavating from a wide-ranging source material from this digital glut, Buck’s work reflects a deep engagement with the aesthetics of glitch, simulation, and post-human presence, often toying with the thresholds of authenticity and replication. The resulting canvases at times read as digital prints, despite being laboriously handmade and imbued with a practiced painterly formalism. Buck’s uncanny aggregate images are slightly blurred, smeared, and oddly collaged - echoing clumsy AI attempts at image generation. He is particularly interested in how images mutate through circulation, gaining new meanings—or losing them entirely—in the algorithmic churn of contemporary image economies.

Morgan Buck (b. 1985, Portland, Oregon) holds an MFA from Oregon College of Art and Craft and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. He was awarded a 2023 Golden Spot Residency by Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and the Pilotenkueche Residency in Leipzig, Germany in 2017. Buck has held solo exhibitions at Upfor Gallery (Portland), Kunstraum Ping Pong (Leipzig) among others, and has been included in group exhibitions at ILY2 (Portland), Museum of Museums (Seattle), Hoffman Gallery (Portland), Pilotenkueche (Leipzig), Salon Similde (Leipzig). He will debut his first New York solo-exhibition in late 2025. Buck lives and works in Portland, OR.