GALLERY POULSEN/MICHAEL ANDERSEN

MICHAELANDERSONGALLERY POULSEN 2011

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY DESTROYERApril 8th – May 6th

DEMOLITIONIN THE

”MEAT PACKING”

Michael Anderson

Friday April 8th one of New York´s most original and distinctive street artists, Michael Anderson is visiting Denmark for the first time to exhibit a solo show at Gallery Poulsen.

Anderson creates his collages without artifice. His palette consists of com-mercial billboards, street posters and graffiti stickers, which he has torn down from the streets all over the world. The posters he collects are ripped into hundreds of pieces and archived, and then are recombined in unusual juxtapositions to form his composed collage mosaics, always combining strong political and /or cultural references.

The impact of the collages is a kind of recognition of the street scene which we see in places like New York and London. There is a pinprick of some-thing familiar about them, but also something new and disturbing, when feel-good typographies and commercial icons are turned into compositions that are more than their individual and original messages and meanings.

His collages range in scale from miniature to monument. They’re so unabashedly pop that two were recently reproduced, blown up to 15 x 20 meters and used as a Target department store billboard ad campaign in Times Square in NYC.

The 43-year-old, Bronx-born collagist is foremost a collector of images, an index of vast quantities of wheat-pasted street advertisements for movies, music events, and political campaigns. His 2010 collage Red Abstraction features Benicio Del Toro’s face from the poster for the movie “Che”, combined with Ashley Judd from the movie “DeLovely”, dancing with Kevin Kline, playing Cole Porter. This is all set against a back-ground of bikinied girls, floating heads, graffiti abstraction, and rock stars. Anderson’s pastiche is a string of re-coded signifiers. Elsewhere, he has remixed ads for Barack Obama’s political campaign with Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, The Wu Tang Clan and Britney Spears, in an ambivalent play on the race and class registers of their source material.

Anderson’s studio in the Striver’s Row section of Harlem, is a ground-level store-front, formerly a barber shop, which he calls the Harlem Collage Shop. Stack upon stack of movie, television, music , movie, and other miscellaneous street posters are piled up to the ceiling. On the table and makeshift shelving sit thousands of graffiti stickers collected in notebook after notebook. As we arrive he is at work at the large table that occupies the center of the room, tearing and gluing street posters together making his remarkably detailed collages.

Anderson is hyper -specific about where people sit or what they touch in his seemingly chaotic studio space. There is obviously a method to his madness that is not immediately understood by the casual observer. One thing which is readily apparent, Anderson´s collages are full of energy and didactic meanings in his beautifully juxtaposed compositions. During his visit here, the artist will, as always, search the streets of Copenhagen in order to find and take local posters and stickers to be used in his future work. In this way Danish street culture will be incorporated into this now huge data base that forms the archive for his future compositions.

Michael Anderson began his carrier with merging collage and painting but since the early 90s he has entirely dedicated himself to advancing pure collage. His collages have been shown in New York, Amsterdam, Madrid and a number of other American and European cities. The works especially created for this exhibition here at Gallery Poulsen lead the viewer directly into the artist´s vision of our modern society as an example of what it´s like to be alive in our contem-porary international society today.

Morten PoulsenApril 2011

MICHAEL ANDERSON /APRIL 2011 / PAGE 2/3

Morten Poulsen

“FLY BY NITE” COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 2011 33.5”X43”/ 85.09CM X 109.22CM

“MEXICAN GRAFFITI/STUDIO 54” COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 2011 28”X38 / 71.12CM X 97.79C


“CHINESE CELL-PHONE-MAFIA” 2006 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS (CHINATOWN NYC) (I DONT HAVE THE PERFECT DIMS)

“A PRICE ON YOUR HEAD” 2011 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS, NYC POLICE POSTERS, POSTCARDS 36.5”X28.75”/ 92.71CM X 73.025CM


“AMERICAN GAME OVER” 2011 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 32”X41”/ 81.28CM X 104.14CM

“SHE’S OK” 2011 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 36.5”X28.75”/ 92.71CM X 73.025CM


“CAPITAL ‘A’” 2010 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS AND BILLBOARDS 33.25”X28.5”/84.455CM X 72.39CM

“LUCHA KONG” 2005 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 37”X46”/93.98CM X 116.84CM


“GOD’S AND CIRCUS’” 2005 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 37”X46”/93.98CM X 116.84CM

“GRAND THEFT AUTO” 2005 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 37”X46”/93.98CM X 116.84CM


“I MET HER AT THE BLOCK PARTY” STREET POSTER COLLAGE 2011 28”X38.5” 71.12CM X 97.79CM

“LUCKY 7’S” STREET POSTER COLLAGE WITH A WINNING NEW YORK STATE LOTTO CARD, POST CARDS, AND DETRITUS 2011 24.5”X28.5” 62.23CM X 72.39CM


“CLO-TAIRE’S ALL-CITY MOTOR-TOUR” STREET POSTER COLLAGE 2011 25.5”X20.5” 64.77CM X 52.07CM

“BLUE/BLACK ABSTRACT” 2010 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 38”X28”/97.79CM X 71.12CM

“BLUE/BLACK/ORANGE ABSTRACT” 2010 COLLAGE FROM STREET POSTERS 38”X28”/97.79CM X 71.12CM


Flæsketorvet 24 · 1711 København V+45 40 15 55 88 / +45 33 33 93 96

[email protected] · gallerypoulsen.comMember of Danish Galeries Association

Documents

GALLERY POULSEN/MICHAEL ANDERSEN