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Email PageTransition Offense
May 10, 2007- June 9, 2007
Reception: May 10, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mike Quinn
BUIA Gallery
541 W 23rd StBUIA Gallery is pleased to present "Transition Offense," the debut solo exhibition of artist Mike Quinn. In altered ready-mades and works on paper, Quinn focuses on the obsessions and addictions that become coping mechanisms for lifeıs daily battles. Delving into his own past and current addictions to sports, alcohol, cigarettes, Michael Jordon, caffeine, and pills, Quinn approaches the subject objectively and introspectively, employing the substances of addiction as his primary media. Attempting to rationalize the chaotic behavior accompanying these obsessions and addictions, Quinn works in a minimal aesthetic, intending for the ideas to manifest themselves visually in a clean,ı concise, and orderly way. The work expresses pain, dysfunction and addiction but with a palpable undercurrent of confident humor.
In Quinnıs work, the competitive focus of athleticism and the OCD of addiction translate into an interest in formal control as seen through the clear influence of Robert Ryman in many of his compositions and gestures, while an interest in the somewhat self-deprecating yet extremely raw self-exposure of Paul McCarthy provides the counterbalance and interest in grit. An illustration of the intersection of these two drives can be seen in "Addict Desk Reminder," 2007 a diptych of two small restaurant peg board style signs reading ³DONıT DRINK², ³DONıT SMOKE² that has been vandalized by splatterings of pink and blue pills. The ordered reminders not to drink or smoke are clearly delineated in uniform white letters against a black background in an attempted statement of authority but are subverted by the inadvertent contamination of the pills. Though corrupted, a certain beauty arises and it is in the balance of these conflicting forces where Quinnıs interest lay.
A similar moment of the clash of order and disorder can be seen in, "Jordan/Addiction Descent Painting," 2006 a large piece of paper, seductively lightly painted with pale green Mylanta and sparingly and delicately speckled with the occasional cigarette butt, a single rolling paper, fleeting swaths of tobacco and gold leaf, and a miniature leaping drawing of Michael Jordan. The piece is extensively varnished and ever so delicately cracked. A nearly ethereal meditative moment results and seemingly the pandemonium of dysfunction is thwarted.
Quinnıs works become trophies celebrating fleeting moments of victory or success on one hand or moments of failure or defeat on the other. Ultimately, it is a very fine line between success and failure and what something is, and perhaps it is the conscious effort and not the temporal victory or defeat that counts.
Mike Quinn is an NYU graduate and City College MA candidate. Recent press includes mention in The New Yorker for his participation in "Quotidian" at BUIA. We are excited to announce the opening of Mike Quinnıs debut solo exhibition.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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