First and foremost: GOD BLESS OBAMA and GOD BLESS AMERICA
God Who?
Not important- Important is that the right man was chosen. Something that the people of the US haven't been good at for a loong time now.
SO
Who is this Michael Lin anyway you may ask?
Michael is one mighty, globe trotting dude who made his fame appropriating granny’s rug sack material patterns, repackaging it as tasty architectural accents that rethink the tradition painting and feeding it to the cultural elite to ohhh&awww at… and sometimes actually use. Yes he makes useful art… But it’s more than that of course (sorry for the crass cynicism my friend- helps me get the juice flowing) Michael has helped to perpetuate the infinite, ever circuitous discourse of ‘painting’ by taking the stuff off the stretched canvas and applying it to walls, floors, ceilings, tennis courts, and whatever other architectural surfaces might pertain... including, at his last SGA appearance, a skate ramp. He built a modified half pipe right into the manicured atrium of the prestigious 3 on the Bund building for thrashers and pipe heads to feast their wheels on… It was a sunny, West Coast, conceptual addition to the often, stuffy, drab Bund-side digs of this gallery.
His projects also usually operate in an anthropological, cultural-specific way by using local iconocography or decorative motifs.These otherwise pop, kitsch, or traditional fabric patterns (now he’s getting into product packaging, etc.) become re-contextualized and re-scaled as breathy hi-art environments.
Michael’s from the West Coast- Cali and from Taiwan and from Paris < > Brussels and from Shanghai where he splits his schizophrenic, timezone confounded days with his beautiful, severely pregnant (with twins –one boy one girl... some guys have all the luck) and very talented artist girlfriend, Heidi Voet, who seems equally busy with international exhibition planning. (The last time I was there she had made a very funny assemblage that basically was a tropical plant wearing a Mickey Mouse/Campbell's tomato soup can T-shirt) The two split a studio downstairs from where Liu Jianhua’s studio used to be and where Xiang Liqing and Fei Pingguo (Alexandr Brandt) still are but never seem to be.
The first encounter I had with Michael’s work was in 2000 or 01, or something like that, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Not only an exceptionally deconstructed art space in itself the Palais was hosting Michael’s floor painting/installation that also doubled as a lounge/rest area. Essentially a vast, purple sea that sat on the Palais’ bottom floor, this exceedingly decorative – almost Floridian rococo- piece just sucked you in like a cool pool on a hot day. Once submerged onto his floral patterned surface you were encouraged to sit down and relax on matching pillows scattered about on the ground… maybe it was a soft surface as well… I don’t remember t’was a long time ago.. but it stuck because I like that architectural interventionist shit, and I like painting too… But the stuff that just sits on the wall isn’t enough for these post-post-post-post Modern times. Michael seems acutely aware of this.
The next time I remember seeing his work was in an equally charged art space, LIC, NY’s PS1. This time he colored the seamless walls in PS1’s cafe with more fuchsia peony painting which enlivened an already lively place. PS1’s summer Saturday, ganja and sun soaked Warm Up parties only got higher with Michael’s paradisaical decoration/installation/painting. I never thought that I’d meet the man, much less work with him… but as it turns out it’s a small world after all.
Rania Ho introduced me to Pauline Yao who introduced me to Michael and Heidi at the It's Alright exhibition in Hangzhou. Michael also knows Patty Chang who also knows a lot more people that one day I may or may not meet.
Anyway- That’s Michael for you – in a nut(ty) shell. He’s in Taiwan now resting, waiting, and anticipating two bodacious additions to his already beautiful oeuvre.
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