07/09/2026
Opening Friday, July 10, 6–9 PM
Michael Colletta
Tea-soaked madeleine
July 10–August 2, 2026
Oolong Gallery
4 Cortlandt Alley, New York
The artist will be present from Encinitas, California. Michael Colletta received his MFA degree from Yale University in 1987.
Michael Colletta’s paintings are rooted in the ordinary events that accumulate into a life: gatherings of family, childhood play on suburban streets, garage-band concerts, the watering of plants, the umbrellaing of a beloved, and the solace of remembered places. Echoing the exhibition’s title, Tea-soaked Madeleine, these works arise from a mysterious transformation of memory into universally intimate micro-monuments. Working from memory and invention as much as observation, Colletta pares away incidental detail to arrive at images that feel at once personal and archetypal. His recurring figures and motifs function less as portraits of specific individuals than as a means to convey affection, longing, wonder, and belonging.
Colletta’s paintings possess a quiet emotional gravity. Their simplified forms, carefully orchestrated color relationships, and luminous spaces create a world where everyday experience takes on an almost mythic dimension. Colletta reminds us that profound meaning is often found not in extraordinary events, but in the moments that linger in memory long after they have passed, acquiring a significance greater than the events themselves.
—Larry Groff
�Marcel Proust viewed involuntary memory as containing the “essence of the past,” claiming that it was lacking from voluntary memory. When the protagonist of Proust’s novel eats a tea-soaked madeleine, a long-forgotten childhood memory of eating tea-soaked madeleine with his aunt is restored to him. From this memory, he then proceeds to recall the childhood home he was in, and even the town itself. This becomes a theme throughout In Search of Lost Time, with sensations reminding the narrator of previous experiences. Proust dubbed these “involuntary memories”.
The exhibition title underscores how painter Michael Colletta works from memory in the studio, allowing gesture and mark-making to reshape the experience
