 Michael Houk Born 1975 in Housten, Texas Lives and works in New York City EDUCATION 2001 Columbia University Visual Arts Division, NY, MFA 1999 The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NYC, BFA EXHIBITIONS 2009 ALL TOO HUMAN: Young American Painters, Schuebbe Projects, Düsseldorf 2007 Selects , curator Michael Collins, Housten Baptist University 2006 Momenta Art Benefit, Momenta Art, curated by Eric Heist, Brooklyn, NYC 2001 Columbia University MFA Thesis Exhibition, curated by Jerry Saltz 2000 Part 01, Columbia University, NY STATEMENT Belief in a community requires one to leave something behind and to barter individual experiences for communal ones. Dissent is still possible, but it is determined by communal perceptions of context. That perception is determined by the story the community tells about itself and that story becomes its face. My recent paintings deal with narratives that form competing American identities. In particular, I have been working with images surrounding political and social violence beginning in the 1960s. This was a pivotal moment in the trajectory of American history and is under much discussion again today. Certain parts of this history are being told while many others are not - it is these latter stories that I am interested in. By engaging other legacies of American history, my work attempts to construct an alternate hypothetical genealogy of the American face. The tension between the story and its event also exists between the image and its ʻthingness.ʼ A painting has the ability to become meaningful as a carrier of sensation beyond any narrative attachment and to undermine our certainty that we recognize an image. In the oscillation between representational clarity and expressive physicality, the paintings suggest a path of flight away from stable identities and narratives toward tangential and minor stories in which we do not recognize ourselves at all. That is the way to breach the narrative of the American self. |
