Artist Michael Zelehoski sculptural paintings are arranged to create the illusion of a three-dimensional stack. Part of “New Order” which features several of these large-scale sculptures that play with perspective, were exposed at Mike Weiss Gallery in New York.
Michael Zelehoski’s work brings formalism and its analysis of objecthood to familiar, three-dimensional objects that are then deconstructed until they are revealed as two-dimensional objects frozen in an illusory moment. The process involves breaking down the object, which is often found or reclaimed, into hundreds of parts that are then engineered into their new abstracted compositions. His work activates the mind, mixing feats of carpentry with elements of trump l’oeil.
The exhaustive process behind creating the works, whether in the form of an installation or a wall-mounted piece, goes back to Surrealism and Magritte boldly declaring, “This is not a pipe.” Michael’s work continues to play with the idea of real time experience and what we are looking at when looking at a work of art. The dynamic results are created by Michael’s ability to think about how our brains struggle to complete a composition that is contradictory or somewhat unresolved. The finished pieces seem to be stuck in an otherworldly state where the brain recognizes them for what they once were, yet is gained access to seeing them outside of their original state of being and without the purpose that they were created to perform.
