Michael Ferris,
Jr: The Artist's Studio (Revisited)
Aron Packer Gallery
118 N Peoria
Chicago IL 60607
October 10 November
15
Michael Ferris,
picture credits to follow
At the historical center
of the Chicago tradition in art lie the essential themes of fantastic
personal narrative, the eccentric human figure, and expressive emotion.
Michael Ferris reflects the continuation of that tradition at its core
through two different worlds he "narrates" in separate bodies
of artwork. On the one hand his sculptures of large primal humanoid
figures, some with fantastic features like multiple hands, ears, and
box-like appendages, are strange totems that reflect the artist's inward
gaze: visitors from another realm. On the other hand the artist's paintings
and drawings outline a tale of personal pathos and risk, depicting the
artist as his alter ego, a self consumed, lonely, and regretful old
man surrounded by his unvalued and dismembered sculptural figures, his
only companions.
The old man as artist has
invested everything in the artistic labor of his creations, and yet
remains tragically cut off from recognition and engagement in the world
and life. There is also a shade of a tongue-in-cheek quality about about
this scenario that Ferris depicts, a dark self humor about the kind
of cliché which the artist portrays himself becoming. Resonating
between the world of his sculptures and the world he portrays in his
paintings and drawings is a particular story with a message, the dilemma
that though we seek connection to reality and life, the impossibility
of trying to fit ourselves into its framework can make reality, and
artistic intention, seem absurd. Ferris relates his sculptures to "the
idea of the 'immortal' from Chinese lore", beings who can pass
from the real world to another place. Ferris explains that "they
don't care if they don't fit into this society anymore because their
thoughts are on this other realm." They are the foils to the real
world, emotional harbingers and calcified edifices of a deeper expressive
realm, sometimes revealing melancholic inwardness, sometimes leering
outward with a peculiar sardonic grin.
The sculptures are deeply
influenced by the art of non-western cultures, particularly African
and Middle Eastern art. Their surfaces are created using a special wood
inlay technique called intarsin which generates geometric patterns with
a kind of primal jazz rhythm spread over the brooding heft and bulk
of his figures. Ferris' particular self invented approach to intarsin
using found pieces of hardwood was influenced by his memory of an elaborate
wood inlay Syrian gaming table that had been part of his household environment
growing up. This also reflects Ferris' interest in outsider art with
its sense of funky invention and obsessive technique creating art out
of found objects.
The artist's drawings and paintings stand in a kind of apposition to
his sculpture world, in the same way that the tradition of representational
Western painting and drawing stand in apposition to the non-western
intuitive and primal realm of his sculptures. In visual works Ferris
depicts himself as an old man still making his sculptures and who, though
lonely and alienated, is still conversant with his work. These images
also stand as a critical allegory about a common artist cliché.
They comment on the self centered hermeticism and alienation that the
artist can become entrapped in. The images are filled with vibrations
of the fantastic in the ordinary, through the strange scatter of humanoid
parts, the crowding of space with heavy baroque decorative details,
and the occasional blank TV screens which seem to be portals to another
world. The historically important Chicago artists Seymour Rosofsky and
Ivan Albright were decisive influences to Ferris's personal vision,
and helped to lay the path upon which the artist continues to explore
his own particular artistic course. Like Rosofsky , Ferris sees the
world with irony and otherness; a vision of the fantastic in the pedestrian,
ordinary suburban world. He is influenced by Rosofsky's sardonic humor
and wit through his ability to mock his idea of being an artist while
also creating a mocking vision of an absurd world to have to live in.
Like Albright, Ferris is intrigued by the pathos of mortal limitations
with a brooding consciousness about timely existence. On Albright's
darkly obsessive pictures, Ferris remarks they are images which have
"beautiful detail and are yet repulsive, and trigger that inner
psychological world of humanity ... they are hard to look at, but they
are true." Coupled with Rosofsky and Albright, the artist's painting
and drawing technique reflects an interest in late Gothic Flemish art
like the work of Van der Goes with its crisp detail and moody spirituality.
Like his Chicago art predecessors Michael Ferris creates a story that,
even in its dark humor, has a deep psychological purpose with an existential
humanism at its core. Remembering his father who was an inspired and
prolific artist like himself Michael recalls him saying " 'Even
though it is weird or doesn't fit, believe in it because it comes from
you'... I picked that up from him, what it is to be an artist and to
be devoted to the human nature of art."
