Body and Blood
Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich
June 9 – July 28, 2023
Press release
Mitchell Anderson, Jokes and Names (Chez ma soeur), 2023.
Encaustic on panel, hand embroidery and gouache on raw canvas on panel (in four parts), 120 x 284 cm.
“This exhibition sequences continuations in readymade, encaustic and embroidery.
The main concerns are patterning, coding and cannibalism.
The visual patterns have been employed by some hegemonic artists. I reappropriate what they previously claimed.
The reclamation of the original is more vital than any reference to earlier use in contemporary art. Easter eggs rather than homage.
The initial thinking was informed by Warhol’s Retrospectives and Reversals of 1979, his appropriating himself appropriating others in long cinematic panels.
A series of Flowers I began in 2021, reappropriating previously appropriated imagery of the floral, is a precursor.
Encaustic panels buttress each work. The material captures every moment of my interaction with it. Bodily and atmospheric.
Two types of hand embroidery are present: I abstract text through the process of transcribing and solid fields of embedded labor are completed alongside a team. Here the texts derive from jokes Richard Prince appropriated, specifically those suggesting an uncomfortableness with same sex interactions.
My interest is in the entwining of content with inert material.
The formats and proportions for each polyptych have been taken from those of Joan Mitchell.
My given name contains that of Michel Majerus, plus one “T” and an extra “L”.
The boxes are branded, single-use, everlasting life. Expired now, their virgin contents are embalmed as art.
Funeral homes use specific stands to display flowers honoring the dead, these stands are those.
The spectrum of red expands, but my reasons for lingering in the palette remain. It is a tone of infinite contradictory meanings placed upon it across cultures. Love, hate, revolution, luck… Blood signifying life and blood signifying death. Judd thought it was the color which showed form best.
This is some of what I do.“
Installation view at Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich.
Body and Blood, 2023.
Installation view at Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich.
Body and Blood, 2023.
Mitchell Anderson, Patterns and Names (Little Fields), 2023.
Encaustic on panel (in five parts), 120 x 520 x 9 cm.
Mitchell Anderson, Expiration piece, 2023.
Expired single-use consecrated communion sets, sealed cases; packaging as shipped, 71 x 38.5 x 18.5 cm.
Mitchell Anderson, Expiration piece, 2023.
Expired single-use consecrated communion sets, sealed bag; packaging as shipped, 18 x 30.5 x 42 cm.
Body and Blood
Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich
June 9 – July 28, 2023
CREDITS
All images courtesy the artist and Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich