My recent work involves the collapse of three-dimensional objects and structures into two-dimensional, picture planes. I employ old wood, used furniture and salvaged structural elements. In the selection and composition of these materials, I seek to mark them in their singularity or potentiate them in their interaction in an effort to blur the distinction between art and the cotidian objects that surround us in our daily lives. In the collapse of the object I explore the duality between three-dimensional reality and two-dimensional pictorial space and try to push the continuum of representational art to a logical extreme. I employ various joining and woodworking techniques as well as fire, natural stains, paint and the forces of nature that have shaped these materials over time.

I begin by deconstructing the object, exploring spatial dimension as I cut it into sometimes hundreds of abstract fragments. I then reassemble the pieces, two-dimensionally and fill the negative spaces with carefully fitted pieces of wood, creating a solid two-dimensional plane in which the object is trapped in a parody of its former perspective. A chair, for example, remains a chair, formally and materially, even as its function is negated. As the object is re-contextualized, it reveals itself as an archetype as well, becoming all chairs through our association and the projection of our shared history. It is at once the aesthetic event, the representation, the object and the archetype.

This process constitutes a logical progression, as well as a literal interpretation of two-dimensional, representational art even as it breaks with illusionistic tradition. Throughout art history we find devices aimed at artificial representation. We see perspective invented, diffracted and ultimately destroyed. But destroying pictorial space didn’t bring us any closer to the physical world that it sought to portray. A representation will always be a representation, just as the object will continue to be the object even as it is collapsed into a picture plane. This is why instead of creating an illusion by employing the artificial techniques commonly associated with artistic production, I appropriate the object itself, with its own formal integrity and unique history, implicit in its material and inscribed in its surface by the passage of time.

I believe that the empathetic connection, from which all true understanding is derived, can involve the projection of a subjective state onto an object. I have at times approached this derisively by endowing objects with blatantly human traits. However, the phenomenological implications of the objects themselves, the echoes of their utilitarian lives and human interactions, can be far more broad and subtle. I initially began working with chairs because I found them to be the most anthropomorphic of domestic objects. In the course of my work I have tried to elicit this quality in disparate objects and materials both in representational and non-representational compositions. In this way I hope to generate an esthetic and emotional connection between subject and object that will transcend boundaries between what we think of as fine art and the wider physical world.


EDUCATION

2003 - 2004 Apprenticeship to late Chilean sculptor Felix Maruenda.
2001 - 2003 Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago de Chile, Fine Arts, BA.
Graduated with votes of distinction.
1996 - 1998 Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Great Barrington, MA, Liberal Arts, AA.

SOLO

2010 Local Project, Long Island City, NY
Becket Arts Center, Becket, MA
2009 Ferrin Gallery, Pittsfield, MA
2008 Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA
Park Row Gallery, Chatham, NY
2007 Kasten Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA
2005 SKH Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
North American Cultural Institute, Santiago de Chile
2004 La Nacion, Santiago de Chile

GROUP

2009 Daniel Arts Center, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Gt. Barrington, MA
Storefront Artist’s Project, Pittsfield, MA
2008 Storefront Artist’s Project, Pittsfield, MA
Lichtenstein Center for the Arts, Pittsfield, MA
Ferrin Gallery, Pttsfield, MA
2007 Atrium Gallery – Ball State University, Muncie, IN
The Gallery at R&F, Kingston, NY
Watermark/Cargo Gallery, Kingston, NY
Kasten Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA
2006 SKH Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2005 SKH Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2004 Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago de Chile
Centro de Artes Visuales, Santiago de Chile
Galeria de Arte Contemporaneo Cantro Norte, Chile
2003 Casino de Vina del Mar, Vina del Mar, Chile
Centro Cultural de La Reina, La Reina, Chile

me@michaelzelehoski.com

413-717-2033