michael anderson

gold record car crash, 2008, collage from street posters, 60x72, cerberus, 2008, collage from street posters, 57x62, Incomplete Portrait of David Wojnarowicz, 2008, collage from street posters, 36x24, Toro Toro, 2005, collage from street posters, 22x17, Black Music vs. Helvetica, 2009, collage from street posters, 4 panels each 60x72, Jack Da Vinci Johnson, 2006, collage from street posters, 96x96

Advertising provides the material, appropriation is the mode of operation, and collage is the medium of my artistic creation/recycling. To create my collages, I use international street posters, taken from the streets of such far-flung places as Mexico City, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Rome and, of course my hometown favorite, NYC. The fragments of thousands of posters are re-arranged in a painterly fashion to create the composition and imagery of an individual piece. I attempt to balance abstraction and representation in composition to create a static/non-static effect in the over-all experience of the work. These collages develop non-linear narratives that capture the experience of contemporary life with dark humor. In taking posters from the street, which are super-saturated and obvious, I focus ideas together to create a collision of energy that allows for tremendous juxtaposition. When people see my work there is a pinprick of recognition, an unexplainable familiarity, that they’ve seen parts before, but never in that way. As a sort of puzzle map of the collective unconscious, I make art about the world we live in, a document to show what it’s like to be alive today.

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