MICHAEL CHANDLER

When making these collage works I kept in mind the cubist and surrealist poet Pierre Revardy’s idea of what makes an image powerful. He thought an image is born from a juxtaposition of realities that are more or less far apart. The more distant and distinct the relationship between the realities, the greater the image’s emotional power and poetic reality. Revardy believed an image is powerful because the associations are distant and true. Using mostly 20th century artifacts (I like the color printing process of 1960s magazines, particularly Paris Match) my work is at the nexus of Revardy’s idea of the image and an analog version of the cracked lens randomness encountered while browsing the web.

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Born in Denver, Michael Chandler was a student of Stan Brakhage at the University of Colorado in Boulder during the late 60’s and attended Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa. He started showing his artwork in 1972. Chandler has been a gardener in the Hollywood Hills, done mining assessment for the Anaconda Company, worked on Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Rifle Valley Curtain and Running Fence projects in Colorado and Sanoma County, CA, ran survey lines for Contact Logging in Philipsburg, Montana, worked on the production of Walter Hill’s movie The Warriors, painted walls at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, did installations at the Mudd Club and Club 57 with Mary Ann Monforton in New York City and was an assistant to Dan Flavin through the Dia Art Foundation. In 1985 he began exhibiting his paintings in New York and Milan at the galleries of Salvatore Ala. Among others, Chandler's artwork has been shown in Munich with Galeria Paal, in Bologna at Galleria Comunale d’Arte Moderna, in Seoul at Gallerie Seomi, in Rio de Janeiro at the Museum of Modern Art, with Achille Bonita Oliva's Transavantgardia at Castello Colonna in Genazanno, Italy, in London with Sandra Higgins Fine Art, at Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art, and in New York City at P.S.1, the Drawing Center, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Valentine Gallery in Ridgewood, Queens and John Doe Gallery in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Mike Chandler lives and works in New York City.