MAGGIE MICHAEL

The organization and placement of paint in my work establishes content that refers to and eventually undermines its own materiality. The combination of oppositions of matter, systems of grids, and organic formations result in animations that are a product of the work’s physically manipulated flow of paint, its drying stages, and its smooth, wrinkled, and/or bubbled skins. At once the paint insists on suspension, adhering to a two-dimensional plane; yet, it contradicts its flatness by floating and undulating within a compressed space. It is a given that painting is not pure play with figure and ground or color and form. In keeping with this, I nurture identities into pours and subvert what feels comfortable so that my approach pushes and questions the framework of formalist tendencies. To facilitate one level of discomfort, I use contemporary materials that are not necessarily in the traditional language of painting. The physical, elevated surface of the latex pour is positioned against the barrier of the ground. The grounds include canvas and the reflective or sanded surfaces of industrial acrylic sheeting. The pours and grounds confront the viewer who is in search of the elite materials and (transcendental) effects of painting: the oils, linens, glazes etc. Instead, the viewer finds animated drips and pours made with familiar materials. The pours and drips of latex paint point to the banal interior spaces that independently frame liquid spills, latex paint, and plastic. As a participant in mass culture, the viewer engages the work through familiarity and knowledge of industrial/home paints, colors, and surfaces in the gallery setting. In an interior, domestic space the drip is cursed and undesirable, usually negative in its implications of wetness - beckoning to be dried and removed from eyesight. In the gallery, however, the dry drip has become an emblem of abstract expressionism and a herald for its accompanying manifestos. My work includes these associations with liquid pours and drips and their drying stages by housing a context for redeemed mishap, which privileges the liquid skeleton through intentionality, control, animation, and nurture.