Michigan artist Michael Reedy is back with a new set of works, evolving his trademark blend of faithful anatomical figures and dreamlike abstraction. “Dear Future Self” is his new show at Helikon Gallery & Studios in Denver features mixed-media pieces on paper. The show runs through April 21 at the gallery.
“The delicate strands of silver hair that have started to populate my wife’s head most easily explain what motivates my work,” the artist says. “At one moment, I find them incredibly beautiful, and celebrate the fact that I have had the opportunity to share my life with her, and in another moment, I am struck with my fear of growing older and eventually losing her. Everything eventually seems to revolve around this point-of- tension between beauty and despair, between living and dying. My hope has been, that by employing a range of pictorial conventions (medical illustration, op art, classical nudes, etc.) I could blur the contentious boundaries between life and death, personhood and object, and the beautiful and the ugly; laying one on top of the others like a series of scripts that can be read simultaneously.”
See more of the works below.
The solitary figurative sculptures of Frode Bolhuis are untethered to any one specific culture or frame of mind, existing at the convergence of generations and experiences. His use of textiles brings a more visceral connections to each of the subjects, and the vibrancy within each extends past the artist’s chosen hues.