Reinforced Moulin 2008, courtesy of artist
Viewed from afar, Michael Schall’s larger works appear modest in size but once distance is breached, due to their magnetic pull, the pieces perceptually inflate to monstrous proportions. Closer examination reveals these black and white pictorial landscapes are composed of hundreds of thousands if not millions of tiny graphite marks. Practically microscopic in detail Michael, with the skill of a neurosurgeon, depicts the imagined and quite possibly the not so distant future. A first response to his repertoire is a man versus nature motif but that's too simple and dismissive due to the wry wit found in drawings such as Battle at Sea (2008). Here ocean liners and container barges seemingly battle for oceanic supremacy on an arctic ice field. On a more profunditory level Schall’s works seem to radiate an inborn sublimity. They are similar not so much in the surface level subject matter as the atmospheric conditions found in William Blake works. All Michael’s drawings seem slightly veiled in a thin coating of distance-influenced haze as if when viewing them the eyes are waking from a deep sleep. And found just below the heavily penciled surface an awe-inspiring spiritual undertone rests crouched on one knee. Seismic activities run deep literally as well as metaphorically in these works. They seem reminiscent of G.’s ideas, in Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, that everything living on the earth’s surface, including us, are simply bonding agents that keeps the sun, earth, and moon intact within the “ray of creation.” And that’s a beautiful thing.
Michael Schall is an internationally shown artist who recently received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His most recent solo show was The Augmented Fourth Pierogi, Brooklyn, NY (2009); groups shows including State of the Art: New York, Urbis Art Center, Manchester, UK (2009); Note to Self, Schroeder Romero Gallery, Chelsea NY (2009); and Gray Scale, Pierogi Liepzig, Liepzig, DE (2008).
Below is an e-mail interview conducted in mid August 2009.
Richie Budd
Can you shed light on the subject matter of your work?
Michael Schall
I have always had a tough time explaining the over-arching subject matter of my drawings, I think because each piece is so thematically different from the others. This is not so much a conscious decision, but a result of my working process. It takes me so long to finish a drawing, that by the time I’m near the end, my ideas (and patience for what I’m drawing) have usually shifted pretty dramatically, that the next piece rarely resembles the one before it. So my body of work develops in a linear way, with each piece feeding off the one before it, but allowing for new thoughts and ideas to easily enter into the process. There are, however, some themes that tend to work themselves into the drawings on more than one occasion. So here is a rough list, in no particular order: immense industrial projects, the absurdity of geo-engineering, the beauty and arrogance of technological progress, grand but failed ideas, conspiracy theories, the burden of minutia, potentiality vs. futility, invented experience, Las Vegas, manipulating the landscape, depicting light and space and atmosphere with only pencil on paper.
Your work has a sort of gravitational pull especially the piece "Remaking the Night." I remember seeing it at a New York City art fair and remember noticing it being caught in the eyes of passer-bys who did 180's to view it. Can you talk about the magnetic quality of your work?
Generally speaking, I think that magnetism is due to the level of detail I use. When people see something that looks detailed from afar, they are instinctively drawn towards it, until they are close enough to see the gist of what’s going on. That point for my work is about 6 inches from the paper. I want people to get close enough to smell the pencil. I’m trying to make work that holds up as an image from far away, but where all the exciting stuff happens right in front of your face. I have also been thinking a lot recently about centers of energy (explosions, black holes, gravity, trees, people, etc), and those ideas come directly into play in Remaking the Night Sky. I wanted to create a directional momentum radiating from those glowing orbs. Light is cast away from them in all directions, but there is also a gravitational pull back in. One of the goals of that piece was to create something that was both full of energy but completely static. I guess, in other words, something magnetic.
You’ve been living and working in NYC for quite awhile and I am sure you have seen a number of people come and go, have your influences remained the same? And who are you looking at now?
The great thing about being an artist in NYC is that you’re able to see so much art in person, and because of that, you are constantly finding artists to be inspired by. Honestly, in the last couple years, the two things that have had the most impact on my work have been the Met and the MOMA. The shows they have brought in recently have been incredible. James Ensor was a revelation. The Seurat drawing show blew my face off. El Greco, Poussin, Morandi, Courbet, Francis Bacon, Bonnard’s late interiors, the Chinese landscape painter Wang Hui, Dutch paintings, Turner, and others. Those two museums are such amazing resources. To be able to see all of that incredible art in the last couple of years has been a real treat, and its made a serious impact on the way I make my work.
How did you find yourself in the art world, how did you arrive there?
I’m actually still looking for myself in the art world. I think everyone is right now. There has been a real shift this past year in the way we as artists look at our profession. I actually think the economic fiasco is going to be good for art as a whole. Less emphasis on production, on sellable work, on finding the next hot young art star, and more on creative thought, ideas, energy, and excitement. Its already had an impact in my studio, and in the past couple of months, I’ve been making work that is drastically different than what I did for my last show. I’m trying weird things, most of which don’t succeed, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t have to show them to anyone. They’re just for me, for my process. What does matter is that I’m thinking outside of what has given me success in the past, and have allowed myself the freedom to make some grand failures.
Who is your hero?
Andrew Zimmern, from Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. He gets paid to travel around the world and eat weird stuff. I would kill to have that job.
This may seem silly, but if you could project yourself five years into the future what do you see?
I actually don’t see myself much different in five years than I see myself today. I think I’ll be doing pretty much the same thing. Trying to make work that I’m excited about, and hopefully, other people will be too.
What’s next?
Having just finished some new drawings for the group show at Pierogi, in Brooklyn, this summer, I’m now just starting to prepare for a solo show at Platform Gallery in Seattle in February. I’m also really excited to have a new collection of drawings published in the upcoming McSweeney’s literary journal, due out in September.
More information:
Other artist interviews:
Zane Lewis is dead in New York
The Swede John Rasimus has big logs
George Zupp smells weird in Texas
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