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Negations
Christopher Michlig - a solo exhibition of collage, sculpture, and video by Los Angeles-based artist
opening reception : Saturday, February 16, 6-10pm
show runs : February 16 - March 22, 2008
Beginning with the notion that artistic engagement with a subject is an oppositional relationship, NEGATIONS addresses this idea with a group of work ranging from destructive, to productive in their harmonization of opposing forces. Working with found subject-materials that formerly performed specific types of public address such as kiosks, advertising posters and pop songs, Michlig variably manipulates these subject-materials while capitalizing on their prior communicative momentum. The results are varied, ranging from the subsumption of whatever alterations are made by a strong residual reference to the original material - on one end of the spectrum - to the destruction of the subject material as an effort to detach it from its original form - on the other end of the spectrum.
Whatever new content is developed through plastic manipulation – such as collage or mold making - there is constantly the risk of this new content to be co-opted by its subject-material, that the final form will refer more to its origin than its new configuration in a referential recoiling. However, this paradoxical relationship is ultimately what gives the works their idiosyncratic forward, liberative momentum.
At the heart of this conflict, at the point of greatest risk of “the cycle reversing itself”, at the moment when (not if), “content [is] co-opted by its subject matter” (Lucy Lippard, Hot Potatoes, 1980), is the site of advantage. This is the point where references can become strategically entangled to produce something new, while simultaneously expanding notions of referentiality.
In conjunction with the show, Michlig has also produced a limited edition poster in collaboration with designer Brian Roettinger and Jason Smith.
Christopher Michlig received an MFA from Art Center College of Design in 2007 and is a faculty member at Otis College of Art and Design, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and the Armory Center for the Arts. He was included in LA 25, curated by Thomas Solomon, and was featured in the 2006 L.A. Weekly Biennial: MFA WMDs, curated by Holly Myers and Tom Christie of the LA Weekly. He has recently exhibited work at Jail Gallery, the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, Schalter Gallery in Berlin, and the City of Brea Gallery in Orange County. Upcoming exhibitions include The Yellow Book, curated by Lia Trinka-Browner at the Fellows of Contemporary Art.
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