Michael Phelan
samsøn
- Evan J. Garza -
Michael Phelan, That’s Not Shit, It’s Feldspar, 2009; enamel on aluminum;
48 x 34 inches; edition of 3
(l to r) Miss High Times, 2009; custom pigment print, 33 x 25 inches; edition of 10; Shit happens, rama, rama (White), 2009; enamel on aluminum; 48 x 34 inches; edition of 3; courtesy samsøn, Boston
Shit is, and is not. Shit is dead. Shit happens, rama rama.
While it is certainly possible to argue the validity of any of the above statements, doing so would be futile. Each declaration, as trite or true as it might be, is an existential fabrication evocative of truisms that have been delivered, ad nauseam, in easy-to-swallow packages. Aphorisims are applicable—even “saleable”—across a slew of religious and cultural beliefs. Contemporary artwork that confronts ideas of cultural co-optation and consumerism can often be preachy, its aesthetic sensibilities overpowered by cliché and polemics. However, an exhibition by Beaumont native Michael Phelan at samsøn proves that mass-produced things can yield successful critique.
Shit is, and is not. Shit is dead. Shit happens, rama rama. These phrases, among others, are etched in black enamel on various solid-colored aluminum panels scattered throughout the show, some leaning against the gallery walls and others expertly framed and hung. Glowing ten feet above the room, the phrase “BLESS YOU TACO BELL” in neon casts a sterile, white, smoldering light over the entire space. Rife with the implication of ethnic appropriations by consumer goods manufacturers and an obvious reference to how culture is both reflected and diluted in what we buy, the statement is literally and physically distant—out of reach and almost out of sight. Devoid of color, the work is also a flavorless and inaccessible beacon for products originally designed to be accessible to as many as possible.
Here, Phelan is neither a painter nor a sculptor: he is an arbiter of things. Revolution is not a dinner party is a series of large, machine-woven polypropylene rugs hung on one wall with dyed bamboo poles leaned intermittently against them. Purchased online from the world’s largest manufacturer of area rugs, Oriental Weavers, the rugs’ vaguely abstract motifs are actually modeled after early Warhol illustrations, but they have been reduced to unrecognizable commodifications. Originally designed for retail, like the sign that looms over the room, these articles have been drained of their purpose by negating the mass production process by which they came into being. They now recall Duchampian readymades in both conceptual framework and execution more than the saleable products they once were.
Faint echoes of Minimalism also carry across the exhibition. A rectangular sea of slag—glass chunks on the floor—is highly minimal in presentation, forming a jagged, site-specific counterpart to the adjacent rectangular wall rugs. The black opaque crags in Tomorrow’s a new day are found objects discarded from glass foundries, assembled into a man-made reconfiguration of a “natural” landscape composed of ninety-degree angles. Here, Phelan’s material approach is reversed, but his conceptual lens remains trained on a critique of consumerism; in this case, consumer waste.
Tellingly, the artist’s hand is almost entirely removed from each piece in the show, and nothing less would be appropriate. Phelan’s inclination to scrutinize consumerism through an art historical lens is not only noble, it is refreshingly nondidactic. Everything in the exhibition is a stale caricature of its former self, revealing and reversing muddied ethnocentric and historical affectations refigured for mass consumption and, fortunately for Phelan, mass appeal.
Evan J. Garza is Curator at Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (formerly Center for Latino Arts) in Boston and Editor-at-Large for New American Paintings.