I will be heading to NYC for a couple weeks, mainly because Michael has an exhibit there, which is the topic of today's entry....
Michael and his friend Sebastian (Tan) went to school together in Chile. Tan set up an exhibition in Long Island City and thoughtfully asked Michael to join forces with him in a joint exhibit. Tan is here working with Michael in the studio and staying with us. It is really fun to watch the two work in the studio, in fact all three of us are working in the studio! I am working on some mono-prints- which will be discussed at a later post....
I wanted to post the press release for the show here:
Sebastian Vargas & Michael Zelehoski
(UNIVERSAL) Art is No Object
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 16th, 6-9pm
Sebastian Vargas and Michael Zelehoski studied under the late Chilean sculptor Felix Maruenda and collaborated extensively during Zelehoski’s time in South America, ultimately helping to finish Maruenda’s Monumento al Trabajador Voluntario, which Maruenda died before completing. At the time, the two worked three dimensionally and were both heavily influenced by their mentor. Five years later, having worked independently, on separate continents, both have sought to incorporate the formal, spatial and phenomenological concerns of sculpture into two-dimensional works of art. However, their respective approaches could not be more varied nor the end results more distinct.
Sebastian Vargas explores volume, perspective and spatial dimension in the context of brightly colored, stylized landscapes. These landscapes are dominated by dynamic forms that bend and arch like architectonic bubble gum. Reminiscent of Chillida and Le Corbusier, Vargas’ forms sprawl fiercely across the picture plane unencumbered by the material constraints of the actual, physical world. In this sense, Michael Zelehoski takes a near opposite approach. Instead of creating a representation, Zelehoski appropriates actual objects and structures, collapsing them into two-dimensional planes in an effort to blur the distinction between art and the quotidian objects that surround us in our daily lives. In this way, Zelehoski explores the duality between three-dimensional reality and two-dimensional pictorial space and seeks to push the continuum of representational art to a logical extreme.
If reconciling two and three-dimensionality is a daunting task, so has been the reconciliation of the two artist’s diverse approaches to the problem. The differences in Vargas and Zelehoski’s works are striking, more so when one considers their common background and shared formal concerns. The contrasts in their work testify to the broad and subjective nature of questions of representation and reality and suggest that these explorations are as relevant today as they were at the height of modernism.
Local Projects is located at 45-10 Davis Street in Long Island City. Local Projects is a non-profit organization and is a forum for artists from any background, medium, and experience.
