Ian Micheal: Intimités

Mariane Ibrahim is delighted to present a solo exhibition in Paris by Ian Micheal entitled Intimités. The show will be on view from June 8 to July 22, 2023 and will mark the gallery’s second exhibition with the artist. 

 

Ian Micheal's paintings depict moments, gestures, urban zones, neighborhoods, and communities, in California, within which he situates his painting practice. The work has a strong interior focus, implying that his paintings are often set in comfortable interior spaces, like bedrooms or kitchens, small front lawns, and backyards, with figures displaying familiarity, intimacy, or close proximity. In an interview,[1] Micheal stated that the figures in his paintings are large, in tandem with the human-scale of his paintings and can appear monumental. A cursory look at the installation views of his debut show at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Chicago reveals how much only three or four of his paintings could dominate a showroom space. Regarding his technique, Micheal aims to refine the canvas by often sanding the pre-primed canvas until it smooths out before applying paint. The effect combined with his color choices of cool veiled pink or rose pink as opposed to pink yarrow or bossy pink creates "softness" or "coolness" attributes that remind me of art historian Robert Farris Thompson, who defined these according to notions of ‘character’.[2]

 

Even with this cool aesthetic appeal, Micheal, an Oakland resident, evokes the brash and bold reality of life in his city. If Micheal's paintings take as their sources the social, political, and artistic movements of Oakland, then his work may be characterized along the lines of what philosopher La Marr Jurelle Bruce calls "schizophrenic time".[3] If Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha was influenced by the plush Hollywood city of Los Angeles County during the 1960s, the horizon of glamour, and the ever-expanding domain of media and advertising, which would have shown important shifts towards the "billboard" and signage as critical sources for artists and architects,[4] then for Ian Micheal, we can safely argue that he has been influenced by the scene of vast underdevelopment, the real estate market, and simultaneously the vast subcultures of Oakland city with its own particular histories of social, political, and artistic upheaval.

 

This does not imply that Micheal is not influenced by signage (he is). But rather than mere "pluralism" of forms,[5] Micheal's work takes up urgent questions of the present in ways that signal towards a different kind of artistic practice than that popularized by Ruscha. I am interested here in how the artist's focus on specific black communities, particular low-income neighborhoods, and particular forms of queer intimacies complicates the horizon of "signage" and pluralist form in California painting. The neon-like appeal of Rodeo Drive is exchanged for the veiled rose pink of the bathroom tiles at the Rose Motel in Compton.

 

In other words, if architect Denise Scott Brown has argued that "the city can be seen as the built artifacts of a set of subcultures",[6] we can easily assess how the particular Oakland neighborhoods provide a critical source for the artist. The social dynamics in this city, founded in the 19th century, reflect the nation's own social and political trajectory over the last century, including white flight and urban renewal.[7]

 

The general attitude of Micheal’s paintings reverts back to 19th and early 20th century portraiture. I am referring to the way human figuration features most prominently in his canvases whereas the architecture forms a limited though important background. Though this is a tendency evident in modern painters like John Singer Sargent, we can still witness the postmodern impulse of his paintings. To this effect, Micheal’s take on the Rose Motel in the city of Compton, can be outstanding with his particular usage of the veiled pink and rose-pink bathroom tile as a motif (it appears as an extension of the beddings) with the two figures lying comfortably on top of the bed. The signage of the Rose Motel comes into his paintings in a way that is integrated in the bedroom wall interior, rather than isolated in the car park and roadside exterior.

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