Interior with Statuettes, 2004 Michael Wetzel Warm Wishes From a forthcoming review of Michael Wetzel's work by Adam Mendelsohn: I like Michael Wetzel's paintings because they invite simple questions like, who are those people? Or, who occupies those rooms? In "Rose Garden" (2004), we are taken for a walk down the garden path. What we find at the end of it is a patrician gaggle frolicking quietly in Gatsby's green light. On a garden bench, we see two attractive girls entertaining each other and a boyfriend. Hell, maybe they're all related. It's landed gentry American style. "Interior with Statuettes" (2004) shows off Wetzel's flair for doing fabrics and pattern. What we are shown is an empty, well appointed, parlour furnished with token objects - paintings of horses and dogs with a few delicate porcelains scattered about. The inhabitants aren't there anymore and who will take their place? Wetzel's waylaid picture of rustic old money invites us to step in and be transformed. I must admit, I find it a little confusing viewing Wetzel's paintings as contemporary art. They loosely belong to a tradition of society painting except there is a fugitive calculation floating around somewhere in them. It just doesn't make sense that I should be fascinated by Wetzel's subject matter. Who cares about a jettisoned, to-the-manor-born lifestyle that apes English country side living? And so it seems peculiar. Peculiar that Wetzel's observations of redundant, displaced class maxims should contain such melancholy and softness. So spare a thought for our weeping dinosaurs, our grand Yankee toffs. And more importantly spare a thought for the artist that tempers sold critique with polite charm. Michael Wetzel responds: Society painting has acted as the germ for much of this work. The idea of using an artist to show off your wealth and lifestyle has been on my mind. That brings us to both the fugitive calculation that you mentioned and the matter of the work being viewed as contemporary art. In a previous series I mocked fox hunting painting as a means of using style as symbol and tradition to critique tradition. I since expanded on the idea, some of the paintings propose a breakdown of society in which the old upper class resorts to an Arthurian tribalism. Curiously what runs through the work is the appearance that I am simultaneously celebrating what I am criticizing. It is as though in order to explain this borrowed and therefore illusory form of opulence all of its dusty sadness and false glory come to the surface, an accidental reverence reveals itself. Painting in its primacy allows for a sort of time travel, we've seen a lot of that lately, what I am trying to do is apply past formalities to talk about a part of American identity that may still hold more sway than meets the eye. This will be the artist's second solo show in New York. Exhibition: October 1 - November 6, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 11am - 6pm John Connelly Presents 526 West 26th Street, Suite 1003 USA-New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 337 9563 Fax +1 212 337 9613 Email info@johnconnellypresents.com www.johnconnellypresents.com |
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