Michelle Uckotter at Springsteen

Artist: Michelle Uckotter

Exhibition title: Murder Time

Venue: Springsteen, Baltimore, US

Date: March 13 – April 17, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Springsteen, Baltimore

Moments in violet dance across the paintings surfaces, illustrating a sort of spatial awareness;

I think of this sort of gesture, and this purple hue, as an embryonic resistance, an inward oppositional force of becoming, of formation, of the self.

The colour is lurid, yet static. It is also foreboding, sentient.

To me: it is the considered feeling of being watched in silence, impending danger.

Also brings to mind: contusions, poisoned bodies of water, burgeoning desire, undisclosed weapons facilities.

To be unwell is to be rendered useless,

Or: is it to fashioned,

from cardboard, from spit, from the words of others?

A building rage laps at the walls of my core which rises throughout my person.

With each breath, a hyacinth appears. Their slowing dissolve-formation forms concentric circles, hovering in the air, appearing in rapid succession.

The body, as ravaged by desire, by consumption, compulsion.

To be born from a wish, against your will, with no want of need.

I do not wish much more from this life. I do not desire anything outside of my immediate reach.

A considered refusal is an act of meditation, of spiritual expansion, an embodied proliferation bent on self-destruction.

Obliteration as a calculative device, utilised for the deeds and misgivings of others. The hands of the restless upon the shoulders of the world, mid-throttle.

I consider various environments: of steel beams, of networks, of atoms, or of filled ashtrays, stilted automation, of afternoons pregnant with bland loneliness.

It could be said that in autumn light, dust motes drift like a private elixir, forming elegant patterns, like tectonic driftwood. I feel that their presence is a marker of the impossible quantification of solitary time.

Michelle Uckotter(b. 1992, Cincinnati, Ohio) lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Her recent exhibitions include a group show at Deli Gallery (New York) “Center of the Core” and a solo show “Trap Paintings”, at A.D. (New York). Other exhibitions include “Psycho” at East Hampton Shed (New York), “There’s No Art in Heaven” at Mejia Gallery (Melbourne), “Cornswoggle” at Mole.end, (New York), and “Sinkhole Project, Bar Art” at Interstate Projects (Brooklyn).