Michael Anderson
Artist Statement
Advertising provides the material, appropriation is the mode of operation, and collage is the medium of my artistic creation/recycling. To create my collages, I use international street posters, taken from the streets of such far-flung places as Mexico City, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Rome and, of course my hometown favorite, NYC. The fragments of thousands of posters are re-arranged in a painterly fashion to create the composition and imagery of an individual piece. I attempt to balance abstraction and representation in composition to create a static/non-static effect in the over-all experience of the work. These collages try to develop non-linear narratives that capture the experience of contemporary life with dark humor. In taking posters from the street, which are super-saturated and obvious, I focus ideas together to create a collision of energy that allows for tremendous juxtaposition. When people see my work there is a pinprick of recognition, an unexplainable familiarity, that they’ve seen parts before, but never in that way. As a sort of puzzle map of the unconscious, I make art about the world we live in, a document to attempt to show what it’s like to be alive today.
