Above: Michael ANDERSON, "Black Music vs. Helvetica," 2009. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery.
As I enter the empty gallery and walk to the back room, I am confronted by an extremely large man with long hair who is jumping up and down with excitement. The masterwork of the show, Black Music vs. Helvetica, has just been put up. The four panel work, which takes up the whole wall, bombards me with screaming, undulating images. Primarily in shades of grey, dove-like birds fly above a maelstrom of characters from Snoop Dog to Michelangelo’s David. Staggering throughout their midst are countless soldiers.
Eventually, we sit down on the floor, and with a beer in hand, Michael Anderson eagerly expounds on the topic of his creations. The complexity of Michael’s work resembles its literal form – collage. In an artistic medium that causes many people to roll their eyes, yet which also gave rise to some of the most interesting works of the 20th century, such as the Cubism of Picasso and Braque or the Merz Pictures of Kurt Schwitters, Michael manages to create bursting, pulsing representations of contemporary life. Every part of his process, his medium, his influences, style and subject is beautifully unique.
To begin with, Michael is a collector. He collects street posters, often from the streets of New York, but also on collecting voyages around the world. This means that his work is ultimately informed by the flow of media – and his stories must rely on the literal output of our society. He scours the streets in order to find the necessary elements for a certain collage he is working on, or something catches his eye and he adds it to a collection which contains thousands of individual pieces. The collection process for Black Music vs. Helvetica took him seven years. And then the work itself took another three years to complete.
But Michael is also a craftsman. He is fascinated by the physical properties of the paper, and his collages have no backing, only layers and layers of small sections of posters. Rather than collage complete elements, he fragments each object, so that they become enmeshed in the kaleidoscopic geometries of the composition. Based upon stylistic influences from medieval tapestry, to graffiti writing and artists such as David Wojnarowicz – to whom another work in the show pays homage - Anderson constructs exquisite mosaics made from the torn pieces of these posters. Rather than create one grand narrative, the major works like this one bring together numerous stories, and the layers of meaning take on the same character as the collage itself. He expresses an interest in combining abstraction with figuration. So beyond the intricate weaving of stories, lie his completely abstract creations, reminiscent of graffiti writing, which wrap themselves around the powerful multi-narratives. These constructions flow from him like the improvisational jazz which he mentions as an important influence upon his work.
Michael Anderson’s work could be easily misunderstood. His skill lies in visual rather than literary or spoken language, so he might not quickly admit or discuss the intricacy and depth of his own vision. His work might seem to represent some typical sort of social protest art with guns, soldiers, or images of death. Others might see the characteristic images of popular culture: rappers, drug dealers, scantily-clad women, and dismiss the work for a lack of seriousness. But underneath what could easily be mistaken as simple protest or celebration, there lies an intriguing language and elaborately constructed layering of meaning. This language comes directly from the posters. When you speak to Michael, you realize that every element from a different poster holds another story. They do not represent the private symbolism of an artist, but they refer to very real things which are happening in our world and they can be decoded. The story of the poster is carried into the collage, and so the story behind each image adds to the numerous layers of meaning.
Michael works in a studio in Harlem, which he basically acquired and kept because nobody else wanted it. Drug dealers stand outside all day, trading their wares. He describes cigarette breaks where he learns from their stories and listens to their aspirations. The men outside his door, he explains, often have a felony so early on in life that they cannot vote, or ever get a real job. Socially, this changes the way they perceive life. The streets he lives in are rough, and it is these streets that create the base of his collections. The real topic of Michael’s collage is not so one-dimensional as Pop or Protest art. He visualizes and communicates the perceptions and dreams of many Americans through the language of their own visual culture. Michael does not believe that Black culture is represented well enough in ‘high art, and describes his work as bearing witness to the way it is for many people in this country. Michael wants to represent the times as best as he can. He sees his work as representative of the multiplicity of dreams that are born in America, and he portrays the dichotomy between black and white in this country, but also the symbiosis. This symbiosis he finds the most fascinating, symbolized for him by his own life as a white man from the Bronx, married to an Ethiopian wife, and he sees the children they will have as the beautiful product of this symbiosis, which he feels truly represents contemporary America.
Michael Anderson, Collage Geomancy @ Marlborough Chelsea, 545 W. 25th st., New York, NY 10001. Opening Thursday, March 26, 6-8 pm, through April 25, 2009.
