The Artistic Revolution of Michael Alan

Last Saturday, November 19, 2011, artist Michael Alan art-attacked none other than the Judson Street Church, located at Liberty Square, by projecting his film “Occupy Yourself” onto the church entrance.  Alan’s paintings and performances have added a desired elation and communal awakening that is lacking in much of the sterile works that dominate art today.  For the last few years, I’ve been following his work and has allowed me to interview him.  

Artist Michael Alan projected the film “Occupy Yourself” on the Judson Church entrance, in solidarity with the occupation of Liberty Square. The film was projected in a loop onto the Church entrance of Judson, where political asylum is being held for the occupiers. Everyone was asked to meet at 7pm at the entrance of the church for a night of peace, and positive celebration of life. This was a night of Old time projection and awareness; a peaceful action symbolizing Freedom and a pause in time for a new start. The entrance of the church represents a new beginning and projection on the streets is a way to speak to the world around us.

“Occupy Yourself” is a film about change and the limits of freedom. The film acts as a general attack on fear.  One of Alan’s established methods is working with the human body, metamorphosing it into a living, breathing art installation. Through intricate connections and juxtapositions in the guise of random chaos, Alan takes simple materials such as masks, multiple textures, stolen objects, and cut-up drawings then rearranges and remixes them onto his friends turned art activists with a dose of glue-sprayed flesh.  Alan’s artistic expression is a direct response to a confusing, uncertain, downtrodden, and monochromatic world.  He states, “We are more than property. We are more than buildings. We are part of Life. Living, breathing potential fire. With the ability to do anything. This is about people, not about businesses, faceless corporations or technology.”

Alan’s work is not only a sensory pleasure to absorb, but it leaves one with inspiration—indeed the true crux of art; the promethean torch relay. This torch is very real here and passed along through performance pieces. Originally, his street stunts and performances brought together artists that were all too happy to publicly strip-down and take upon roles, characters, and patterns of motion that were captured on sketch pads, canvas, and film by a rapt audience.  The backdrop and tone changed with every performance spanning themes from exorcism, to corporate drudgery, to Alice in Wonderland.  Music always accompanied, often live. Here Alan’s art makes more art—a kind of animated invitation to the community to explore their own unfettered creative instincts.  More recently, the “Living Instillation” takes these nude performers and transforms them into breathing sculptures of shape and nuisance, but again, they’re alive.  “I’m talking to our civilization, a controlling force; we are heavily influenced by endless tirades of nothings. Nothings. Objects, art, propaganda, business filled with nothing—All I can do is try my hardest to make a visual change.”

Alan’s art is neither a single piece nor a single medium.  It’s an open-ended, ongoing evolution that often blurs between the collaborative and the solitary.  His work becomes public, then private, then back to public.  It is as if a single work transforms from painting, to living sculpture, to music, to gesture, and back to painting.  Materials used on a performer will later end up glued to a canvas.  Witnessing one of his works or performances feels like a fleeting glance into the window of a gargantuan, organic locomotive.  “The main focus,” he states, “Is with change. By showing change, I address all of the above and alter the image. If everything is changing then the image should not stay the same.”  The works have no beginning nor end as they bleed-through from medium to medium and place to place, yet remain self-contained monuments to a new avant-garde in their own right.

No savvy artspeak consciousness is necessary for the enjoyment of these works.  They just sort of hang and glow and pull you around and make you look at them.  There’s an urge to shut-up and absorb.  The performances often run appropriately six hours, as onlookers often spend the day soaking with them.  The same goes for Alan’s paintings.

A signature quality to Alan’s paintings is the unusual sensation that springs from them: you know you are looking at the same painting but in fact you’re not looking at the same painting.  What’s happening here is that you’re actually catching your own mind oscillating between the artistic patterns and your own simulation of scenarios and meanings in the patterns.  Anchor points, shapes, and even colors seem to change.  Inevitably you end up watching the paintings in the same way that you watch one of his performances–for hours.  They are alive, verbs on acid.  Regardless of whether you see one of his exhibitions or one of his performances, you’ll want to drag a bench with you as the hours frictionlessly melt by to the sound of your own enthralled living.  Of this, Alan states, “Motion and its rapid state of change is reality. My response is to express that in the work, drawings, paintings or installation/performances. I want the work to continually change as you look at it, densely layered or in its subtle form. This is the most honest thing I can say conceptually and back it up with my process. It is important to embrace what is around us—mix it, poor it on the floor and spiral it back out the window.”

About Eli Edge

Elliot Andrew Edge has written 1 post in this blog.

Digital native, filmmaker, artist, blogger, and contributing editor for Reality Sandwich Magazine. Some of his exhibitions and performances have included The Museum of Computer Arts, Stevens Institute of Technology, Anthology Film Archives, Chelsea Art Museum, The Millennium Film Theater, The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, Seed, and Rebel.

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