NYAB Event - Mike Womack "Spectres, Phantoms, and Poltergeists"

Mike Womack "Spectres, Phantoms, and Poltergeists"

ZieherSmith

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Mike Womack explores the ephemeral nature of technological advances, accepted by the public at large without serious regard for understanding. Modern media is here contrasted with more primitive materials and processes throughout, and visual phenomena compete with conceptual discourse with an emphasis on the unseen facets of our fascination with communication and information.

At the front of the show is the artist’s Threshold, a piece incorporating bluestone from the stoop of Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn brownstone and a page from his iconic Leaves of Grass. An argument for the inspiration in waking life versus that of theoretical platitudes, the American bard’s words tacked to the gallery wall argue for a romantic realization of the art and poetry of the street, and present a rarified piece of the actual paving stone Whitman looked down upon from the home he inhabited when he wrote his American masterpiece.

Womack’s massive monochrome, Blue Screen, refers to the blue screen of a flat screen TV not receiving a signal – a stark contrast to the dynamic fuzz of generations past. The undulating piece seems to collapse under its own weight, reflecting the interstitial interference of daily contemporary existence.

We Are A Particle Stream is a kinetic installation utilizing a vibrating filament to unravel the RGB matrix of a digital projector. A related series of color photos, Spectres, are actually stills of black and white moving images; including iconic animal locomotion Eadweard Muybridge zoopraxiscope shots. The final piece is Millions of years and a split second comprised of the pairing of a granite chunk alongside an hieroglyphic image of television static.

A 2010 recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Artist Fellowship, Womack was born in Houston, Texas and divides his time between studios in Brooklyn and Colorado.