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Solo Exhibition at Coagula Projects selected as "Pick of the Day"
by the Los Angeles Times, Calendar Live.
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Michael Salerno begins his fourth decade of professional gallery exhibitions with ATMOSPHERE, a selection of recent abstract paintings based on the theme of monochromes arrived at through the extensive physical layering of more than one color. Combining the retinal science of Pointillism with the energy of Abstract Expressionism, Salerno's new work investigates the all-over painting from a fresh, contemporary perspective.
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Michael Salerno, solo exhibition
Claremont Graduate University
Line in the dust
an essay by Mat Gleason
Do what thou wilt
As historical eras go, the generation born immediately after World War II will certainly go down in history as the most demanding of freedom ever. The legacy of following immediate desire, resisting consequence and seeking a self-structured enlightenment has been the mantra of a billion earthly siblings. The recent deacquisitioning of some hard-fought civil and social rights notwithstanding, Michael Salerno's generation screamed and marched until it got what it wanted.
Conservative critics have duly noted that when the freedoms were finally granted, rigor and commitment were the first things to be expunged from the discourse. Salerno has been making an art that is as vigilantly against the demands of pictorial rigor as it is committed to upholding the freedoms of self-expression by purposefully sticking to a monotone expression of that freedom.
Yet the artist personally is no advocate of noble, starving gesture. His is an art of an era of freedom and free exploration, as unfettered with the whims of the art public as his era was with the mores of those who had gone before them. And while Baby Boomer hedonism is sailing quickly towards the unfashionable ash heap of some histories, its legacy easily rivals any cultural force of the millennium as an all encompassing shift away from establishment values.
His generation's underlying note of impulsive freedom is as eloquently expressed in Salerno's oeuvre as it is in any cultural event of the past fifty years. There is as much risk in the lines of decomposition that run throughout the works in this show and their predecessors as there was in any Boomer landmark, from Sgt. Pepper & Easy Rider to Neo Ex and Graffiti. The ability to liberate the single element of Line from servicing the Modernist skeletal frame and quite impressivelyÐ without relying on anecdote or manifesto as a crutch, couch or conÐ all the while retaining the purity of the pictorial surfaceÐ these are accomplishments that combine risk and commitment with discipline and abandon.
Call him a reckless disciplinarian, but Salerno certainly evokes the freedom inherent in the individual gesture while stocking a storage space of commitment to the manifestations of those adventures.
The scribble of purity
The act of marking, the primal act of the scratch, the desire for permanence, that ancient will to say, "I am" or "I was" or "I have existed," the whole infinite realm of artmaking, the entire epoch of humanity's quest to createÐ it all started with a single, simple mark.
Michael Salerno strives for the purity of the simple mark, the scratch, the unadulterated scribble, out of what I perceive to be a desire for an authentic experience of markmaking free of any concern other that its own self-exploration. Of course, Salerno has astutely modified the more primal concerns to at least engage the viewer with a blunt presence almost calm, and, most importantly, permanent.
The Lines, still really marks, are laid down by this artist as if they had wrought their own existence in a quest to be unlike the ink of other, wordier pens. The marks conglomerate to obfuscate their backgrounds in the manner of a lampshade, not enough to kill the light, but more than just enough to remind you they are there.
Line's turn in the spotlight
If one were to individuate the elements of a painting as one could separate the instruments in a band, color would challenge form for singer/guitarist duties while Line would be the bass guitarÐ always present, necessary, but never highlighted; serving at the lead of the other elements and their whims.
If line were a professional athlete it would be the basketball player who scores the assist, quickly passing the ball to the shooter who risks it all for the highlight reel.
If line were in the theatre, it would be the lighting, always serving the players and the sets, whose actions would be darkened monologues without a vehicle to contain them.
So imagine a stage where light shifts on its own, for its own enjoyment. Picture Magic Johnson, the all-time NBA leader in assists, dribbling down court with a gift in his hands. Listen in your head to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and hear the bass finally lead for a momentary unique change. These are the cross-discipline counterparts to Michael Salerno's Line worksÐ the emphasis and exploration of possibilities within the framework of one universal element.
The death of beauty
Connoisseurs, the consumers (beyond mere purchase) of art, should vigorously strive for aesthetic experiences that are something other than a mass of images and formal compositions which feed the ego without ever confronting the mortality or the potential voids created by the time we will never know, that is, the time from the moment which begins after our own departures from life...
While the trend to de-construct the artwork has been infatuating art dialogues for some time now, those artistic endeavors which do not resemble digestible language only problematize things. That many of his surfaces are colored brightly and then seized upon in a slow strangulation of inking and elbow-greased penmanship is the first of many hints that the haunted Line serves as a metaphor in Salerno's work. A metaphor for the disintegration of beauty, of the body. Line as a memory of what might have come before as a demarcater of the disintegration of the rectangle, of the residue of slow decay.
The death of beauty is our own death. Beauty is the measure of our own self-esteem. Beauty is in critical vogue because there are no enemies or atrocities so vast that we can compare our own selves in an unflattering light. The Berlin Wall fell; the ugliness in ourselves did not have a symbiotic symbolic companion. So any ugliness and fear wrenching within Salerno's non-images may be our own acknowledgment and fear of bodily decomposition; metaphorically of many things, but succinctly intuiting our fear of physically de-composing; fear of cancer. Cancer is us eating us, an uncontrolled self-cannibalism. While the artist's new works are not some clever reworking of an image of a cancerous tumor, they are based on the premise of emphasizing the Line and, in a cancerous metaphor, showing the possibilities when it runs amok.
The fear of death and the fear of aging go hand in hand with the love of a pure surface and a harmonious composition. All three of these notions go far beyond Romantic soul-searches and gestures. These belief systems all posit a culture towards denialÐ of the real, of the mundane, of the natural. The artist here presents inorganic works which favor the organic. That his concerns are not illustrated with rotting vegetables or some element thereabouts underscores the seriousness of the purpose in the artist's desire for a permanent record of these Acts Against Denial. Decay is a universal concern. The belief in the healing, cyclical power of the natural push towards de-composition is a stance in need of a champion. Salerno's presentation of his concerns in the form of objects is a stance. He seeks as grounded a pulpit as all of the fashionable paranoias (masked as science) out there competing with his simple views.
In the works of Michael Salerno, to rot is to truly have lived. This is not some ironic posturing or depictions of what a simulated grime should appear as. These are beliefs in decomposing as a testament of having lived, in marking as a sign of having taken a stance. Sometimes, ugliness is the most beautiful and unique thing around.
a few words about Michael
Michael was born and raised in New York. Self-taught, his work from the time of his arrival in Los Angeles (1976) has a stronger formal resemblance (in media, elemental design, consistency and detached determination) to his current body of work than does that of any contemporary artist working today.
In his years as a successful businessman, making art on weekends and between power lunches, Michael ignored the clamor for "PRETTY" art and argued with the cries for "CONCEPTUAL RIGOR." He ignored the market and fashion police in favor of a strange thingÐ just making his art. His primal quest: to break down the Line's relationship to serving image and of surrounding form. As the years went by, the amount of work grew, piled up on shelves and in storage racks, hanging on the walls of a few patrons and a number of friends. With this show of new paintings, all from 1996, he continues these investigations, explorations and celebrations.
Mr. Gleason is the publisher of Coagula Art Journal
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