Michael Salter
Nothing Comes From Nothing
We are so grateful for the opportunity to speak with Michael Salter whose works brighten the day, any day, while they also make us think of real important issues and inspire a meaningful existence.
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Dear Michael, Situations Unknown – what inspired that particular body of works? How did you come up with the title? What’s the make or break rule for selecting works to fit a title or a title to fit a series of works?
That series is like several that have been simply on-going for like 10 years. The motivation for that series is a story of an experience that happened many years ago. I was living in a B+ city typical of many American cities. There was not much activity at night or on weekends downtown. As I would drive home from my studio late at night I would look into these empty corporate office spaces. Inside these offices were these painfully still, clue-laden, brightly lit moments that always nagged my brain for a narrative. Not once did I see an actual human being, just these weird empty spaces that suggested something might happen or something just happened. |
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I am cursed with kind of an obsessive love to observe everything, all the time.
The subject matter of those empty office spaces then became empty parking lots, abandoned loading docks, banal strip malls, and early morning gas stations. All those scenarios can be super interesting.
I’m drawn to a narrative suggested but not made obvious. I adore the discontinuous in reality and so I like to capture and employ that idea in the Situations Unknown works. I get a perverse pleasure in not knowing exactly what is going on.
Titles, for me, are always developed at the end. The linear nature of a title can confuse a piece for me so I really need for the image or object to lead the way.
Your exhibition titled The Edge of Certainty was more about … than …
The Edge of Certainty relates quite specifically to those ideas about the Situations unknown from the previous question. It pinpoints this idea of being cognitively unsatisfied.
When given visual information that seems at first glance to makes sense, to be clear, rational and direct, but at second glance leaves me, and hopefully an audience, hovering logically before sense can be resolved.
I want my work to reverberate cognitively leaving the viewer wondering, a bit like an irrational mental after-taste. The Edge of Certainty is more about NOT knowing or ALMOST knowing than knowing.
What is some of the most exasperating feeling of unease or appeal that you want to highlight with selected elements in your works of the Visual Logistics exhibition…
Well your words are actually quite poignant. I love to create a feeling of both unease and appeal. That is pretty much my experience with reality, which generally I find entertaining.
In the Visual Logistics exhibition I was using extreme disparities of placement, scale, and media to fuel the experience of a fever-like, wobbly sense of the individual in the space, combined with my frequent use of irony and nonsense wrapped in well articulated images and objects.
What story comes to mind when you recall the installation of Research and Development?
Well, that show was the first time I ever made a Styrobot and exhibited it. Since that show the Styrobot has been recreated site-specifically in a variety of venues all over the world, from Pulse art fair in Miami to London to Berlin, Brussels, NYC, Houston, San Jose, Winston-Salem, Portland and published internationally as well. So that show is kind of special when I recall that it was the first Styrobot of many to come.
That show was also a very conscious attempt to make an installation that existed like a boutique with one of a kind objects that looked mass produced along side limited edition objects. I liked the idea of a show that could be mistaken for a store. Also, that show was at Lump Gallery in Raleigh North Carolina and I will have a solo show there this March to help celebrate their 20th and final year.
The subject matter of those empty office spaces then became empty parking lots, abandoned loading docks, banal strip malls, and early morning gas stations. All those scenarios can be super interesting.
I’m drawn to a narrative suggested but not made obvious. I adore the discontinuous in reality and so I like to capture and employ that idea in the Situations Unknown works. I get a perverse pleasure in not knowing exactly what is going on.
Titles, for me, are always developed at the end. The linear nature of a title can confuse a piece for me so I really need for the image or object to lead the way.
Your exhibition titled The Edge of Certainty was more about … than …
The Edge of Certainty relates quite specifically to those ideas about the Situations unknown from the previous question. It pinpoints this idea of being cognitively unsatisfied.
When given visual information that seems at first glance to makes sense, to be clear, rational and direct, but at second glance leaves me, and hopefully an audience, hovering logically before sense can be resolved.
I want my work to reverberate cognitively leaving the viewer wondering, a bit like an irrational mental after-taste. The Edge of Certainty is more about NOT knowing or ALMOST knowing than knowing.
What is some of the most exasperating feeling of unease or appeal that you want to highlight with selected elements in your works of the Visual Logistics exhibition…
Well your words are actually quite poignant. I love to create a feeling of both unease and appeal. That is pretty much my experience with reality, which generally I find entertaining.
In the Visual Logistics exhibition I was using extreme disparities of placement, scale, and media to fuel the experience of a fever-like, wobbly sense of the individual in the space, combined with my frequent use of irony and nonsense wrapped in well articulated images and objects.
What story comes to mind when you recall the installation of Research and Development?
Well, that show was the first time I ever made a Styrobot and exhibited it. Since that show the Styrobot has been recreated site-specifically in a variety of venues all over the world, from Pulse art fair in Miami to London to Berlin, Brussels, NYC, Houston, San Jose, Winston-Salem, Portland and published internationally as well. So that show is kind of special when I recall that it was the first Styrobot of many to come.
That show was also a very conscious attempt to make an installation that existed like a boutique with one of a kind objects that looked mass produced along side limited edition objects. I liked the idea of a show that could be mistaken for a store. Also, that show was at Lump Gallery in Raleigh North Carolina and I will have a solo show there this March to help celebrate their 20th and final year.
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What’s the agenda of the giant sculptures that seem to be the focal point of many of your exhibitions but not really to instill fear or pose a threat. Is it more like a warning sign of all the obsessions that rule our lives or something else?
I have had to unwrap ideas about the robots made from reclaimed polystyrene scraps many times over the years. The Giant Styrobots that are often seen in my installations are born from my love of Frankenstein, the 1931 film, who is the giant misunderstood ‘monster’, combined with my adoration for science fiction and my love/distaste for consumerism.
I have a confusing relationship with consumerism. I adore objects, stuff and things despite the fact I am fully aware of their place in a capitalist system I do not adore. I have often said my relationship to consumerism is like one’s reaction to witnessing a trainwreck: I don’t want to look or participate but I can’t help myself. I’m a minimalist with a sneaker collection.
The Giant Styrobots are made of reclaimed packing pieces of Styrofoam. Every time a piece of electronics, an appliance, furniture, or home goods is boxed, it is packed with these Styrofoam pieces. I can’t think of a better comment on the devastating American addiction of buying things than a giant beast made from the evidence of the act of buying. Yet these beasts are not scary or threatening, but they are docile, fatigued, resigned or misunderstood.
too much could be interpreted as capturing what most feel after overindulging in the unnecessary. Is it more about our e-obsessions and technology ruling daily lives?
It’s about the onslaught of messages and media we’re subject to, and the relentless nagging of the machine for me to part with my money for better insurance, natural ingredients, 30 minutes-or-less, fresh baked, weight loss, only 99 cents, organic, faster, more cushioning than ever before, self-lubricating, 5 foods to avoid, sexual enhancement, anti-anxiety, and more absorbent everything.
When you exhibit in a particular venue/city/country, do you focus on presenting works that speak more to the local sensitivities and current trends or do you follow other trajectories?
For better, or worse, I am always following the same general trajectories. What does the world look like? Why does it look that way? What does it make me think? Why do I think the way I do? What is the connection between what I see and what I think? My work is an attempt to answer these questions over and over again.
Everything Is As It Seems or Nothing Is As It Seems or both? Why?
You are referring to a pair of drawings I did not long ago. These drawings describe a palpable, tangible, existential moment I’ve had many times. Reality is slippery. At any given time without particular motivation I get an overpowering sense. This ‘sense’ stops me in my tracks.
Sometimes if feels that nothing is as it seems and that everything I think is actually obvious, true, real or authentic is, in fact, not those things at all. And that the world around me just a veil of what really is. I am required to ask deeper questions, inquire more critically and investigate more patiently. Other times I am smacked with the sense that everything is as it seems and my anxious will to impose some sort of meaning behind everything is just a chemical imbalance. That the nuances, intentions, innuendos and agendas are just smoke and that my cognitive noodling around is wrong, and I should just bathe in the obviousness of it all.
The biggest revelation from your recent trip to China as an artist whose motto on life and art is…?
By now you can see what my attraction is, to an unbridled, rapid developing country soaked in contemporary westernized visual culture with a 5000 year old cultural backdrop.
Perhaps one of my mottos could be that the world looks like it does for a variety of reasons and therefore my question to myself and others is always What role do you play in the way the world looks?
Whether you’re a maker or just a consumer, every moment of every day is filled with opportunities to affect the way the world looks. I want to own my responsibility in that equation, and really I hope to maintain that discourse so that others can also think about their role in the equation as well.
Your Instagram Account gives us so many reasons to smile and be happy? What are three top rules to follow to find the energy to smile and be happy despite the chaos and unrest?
1- It’s to keep my cynicism in check.
2- To recognize there is so much beauty and truth and love in the world and it’s every where, even in abandoned loading docks and early morning gas stations.
3- I never want to stop looking and thinking and evaluating critically the world around me. I want to see the amazing in the banal and the lies in the sublime. This is what keeps me happy.
I have had to unwrap ideas about the robots made from reclaimed polystyrene scraps many times over the years. The Giant Styrobots that are often seen in my installations are born from my love of Frankenstein, the 1931 film, who is the giant misunderstood ‘monster’, combined with my adoration for science fiction and my love/distaste for consumerism.
I have a confusing relationship with consumerism. I adore objects, stuff and things despite the fact I am fully aware of their place in a capitalist system I do not adore. I have often said my relationship to consumerism is like one’s reaction to witnessing a trainwreck: I don’t want to look or participate but I can’t help myself. I’m a minimalist with a sneaker collection.
The Giant Styrobots are made of reclaimed packing pieces of Styrofoam. Every time a piece of electronics, an appliance, furniture, or home goods is boxed, it is packed with these Styrofoam pieces. I can’t think of a better comment on the devastating American addiction of buying things than a giant beast made from the evidence of the act of buying. Yet these beasts are not scary or threatening, but they are docile, fatigued, resigned or misunderstood.
too much could be interpreted as capturing what most feel after overindulging in the unnecessary. Is it more about our e-obsessions and technology ruling daily lives?
It’s about the onslaught of messages and media we’re subject to, and the relentless nagging of the machine for me to part with my money for better insurance, natural ingredients, 30 minutes-or-less, fresh baked, weight loss, only 99 cents, organic, faster, more cushioning than ever before, self-lubricating, 5 foods to avoid, sexual enhancement, anti-anxiety, and more absorbent everything.
When you exhibit in a particular venue/city/country, do you focus on presenting works that speak more to the local sensitivities and current trends or do you follow other trajectories?
For better, or worse, I am always following the same general trajectories. What does the world look like? Why does it look that way? What does it make me think? Why do I think the way I do? What is the connection between what I see and what I think? My work is an attempt to answer these questions over and over again.
Everything Is As It Seems or Nothing Is As It Seems or both? Why?
You are referring to a pair of drawings I did not long ago. These drawings describe a palpable, tangible, existential moment I’ve had many times. Reality is slippery. At any given time without particular motivation I get an overpowering sense. This ‘sense’ stops me in my tracks.
Sometimes if feels that nothing is as it seems and that everything I think is actually obvious, true, real or authentic is, in fact, not those things at all. And that the world around me just a veil of what really is. I am required to ask deeper questions, inquire more critically and investigate more patiently. Other times I am smacked with the sense that everything is as it seems and my anxious will to impose some sort of meaning behind everything is just a chemical imbalance. That the nuances, intentions, innuendos and agendas are just smoke and that my cognitive noodling around is wrong, and I should just bathe in the obviousness of it all.
The biggest revelation from your recent trip to China as an artist whose motto on life and art is…?
By now you can see what my attraction is, to an unbridled, rapid developing country soaked in contemporary westernized visual culture with a 5000 year old cultural backdrop.
Perhaps one of my mottos could be that the world looks like it does for a variety of reasons and therefore my question to myself and others is always What role do you play in the way the world looks?
Whether you’re a maker or just a consumer, every moment of every day is filled with opportunities to affect the way the world looks. I want to own my responsibility in that equation, and really I hope to maintain that discourse so that others can also think about their role in the equation as well.
Your Instagram Account gives us so many reasons to smile and be happy? What are three top rules to follow to find the energy to smile and be happy despite the chaos and unrest?
1- It’s to keep my cynicism in check.
2- To recognize there is so much beauty and truth and love in the world and it’s every where, even in abandoned loading docks and early morning gas stations.
3- I never want to stop looking and thinking and evaluating critically the world around me. I want to see the amazing in the banal and the lies in the sublime. This is what keeps me happy.
