We are happy to present Brooklyn-based artist Sean Micka from June 20th to September 8th 2018 - following the artist’s presentation in June 2016.
On this occasion Sean Micka will present Object/Subject/Painting:
• AN AMERICAN SILVER SOUP LADLE / • 41 AN AMERICAN SILVER SERVING SPOON, 2017; a series of drawings/collages with texts, spanning from 2015 to 2018; and six works from Background Paintings 2018, a new series created for this show. Along with these works, Three Star Books will display Object/Subject/Slides, 2017, a limited edition project from our series of highly crafted books by artists.
Object/Subject/Painting
The artist has rigorously painted and labored these past four years with oil on canvas employing tiny bristle and sable brushes to recreate selected objects from auction catalogue photos. Each new painting is a technical tour de force competing with the represented piece that is also the product of immense technical labor, art, and craftsmanship. Sean Micka’s paintings become new objects in themselves, a third object, and through this transformation and reanimation from image to object, are more desirable than the original object represented in the catalog photo itself.
Drawings/Collages
A selection of drawings/collages on paper used as preparatory material for previous Object/Subject/Paintings will be arranged and displayed upon the wooden walls of our exhibition space. The drawings/collages are adorned with textual descriptions of the original objects drawn from the auction catalog. These collages — never before presented — are artifacts of the artist’s own labor and craftwork, offering intimate insight into his creative process.
Backgrounds
This 2018 presentation introduces a new series of six smaller scale abstract paintings entitled, Backgrounds. In this series the artist isolates one of the compositional components from Object/Subject/Paintings (the colored backgrounds) and generates automatic compositions from the remaining colors, boundaries, edges, and corners. These color backgrounds are part of a predetermined system and photographic program used in the production of auction catalogs (as such, they are a form of surplus value).
As one can imagine, every auction catalogue object needs to be carefully and methodically photographed in a systematic way. Every object is individually “staged” upon a background of complementing color for image-capture. This background color system becomes an automatic method for generating compositions, fast and quick and ready-to-hand. The Backgrounds are works generated from these systems (and surplus value) while also paying homage the history of abstraction in painting as a conceptual system and modernist programmatic procedures from Josef Albers Homage to the Square to Blinky Palermo’s elusive colored abstract works.
Ultimately we are proud to display Object/Subject/Slides published by Three Star Books, 2017, a limited edition artist book, signed and numbered by the artist, comprising of ten individual folders, housed in a clothbound box. Each folder contains three elements: a transparent “slide”, a monochrome print, and a text document. Upon each “slide” is a UV printed picture of an object taken from the Object/Subject/Painting series.
These new works by Sean Micka demonstrate the artist’s remarkable freedom while keeping his research conceptually precise and solid.
On this occasion Sean Micka will present Object/Subject/Painting:
• AN AMERICAN SILVER SOUP LADLE / • 41 AN AMERICAN SILVER SERVING SPOON, 2017; a series of drawings/collages with texts, spanning from 2015 to 2018; and six works from Background Paintings 2018, a new series created for this show. Along with these works, Three Star Books will display Object/Subject/Slides, 2017, a limited edition project from our series of highly crafted books by artists.
Object/Subject/Painting
The artist has rigorously painted and labored these past four years with oil on canvas employing tiny bristle and sable brushes to recreate selected objects from auction catalogue photos. Each new painting is a technical tour de force competing with the represented piece that is also the product of immense technical labor, art, and craftsmanship. Sean Micka’s paintings become new objects in themselves, a third object, and through this transformation and reanimation from image to object, are more desirable than the original object represented in the catalog photo itself.
Drawings/Collages
A selection of drawings/collages on paper used as preparatory material for previous Object/Subject/Paintings will be arranged and displayed upon the wooden walls of our exhibition space. The drawings/collages are adorned with textual descriptions of the original objects drawn from the auction catalog. These collages — never before presented — are artifacts of the artist’s own labor and craftwork, offering intimate insight into his creative process.
Backgrounds
This 2018 presentation introduces a new series of six smaller scale abstract paintings entitled, Backgrounds. In this series the artist isolates one of the compositional components from Object/Subject/Paintings (the colored backgrounds) and generates automatic compositions from the remaining colors, boundaries, edges, and corners. These color backgrounds are part of a predetermined system and photographic program used in the production of auction catalogs (as such, they are a form of surplus value).
As one can imagine, every auction catalogue object needs to be carefully and methodically photographed in a systematic way. Every object is individually “staged” upon a background of complementing color for image-capture. This background color system becomes an automatic method for generating compositions, fast and quick and ready-to-hand. The Backgrounds are works generated from these systems (and surplus value) while also paying homage the history of abstraction in painting as a conceptual system and modernist programmatic procedures from Josef Albers Homage to the Square to Blinky Palermo’s elusive colored abstract works.
Ultimately we are proud to display Object/Subject/Slides published by Three Star Books, 2017, a limited edition artist book, signed and numbered by the artist, comprising of ten individual folders, housed in a clothbound box. Each folder contains three elements: a transparent “slide”, a monochrome print, and a text document. Upon each “slide” is a UV printed picture of an object taken from the Object/Subject/Painting series.
These new works by Sean Micka demonstrate the artist’s remarkable freedom while keeping his research conceptually precise and solid.