Image: Michael Arata, “Frantic Fast Food Chef,” 2020
A West WING Online Project Space Exhibition
Humorous, theatrical, seductive. Michael Arata’s work lures us into a universe of visceral pleasures and mindful indulgence. A seduction based on an overwhelming intensity of color, strong and rough brush strokes and an iconic choice of image motifs. It’s that sort of seduction that provides an initially pleasant visual impact just to guide you to an entry point of deeper, darker and sometimes fantastic thoughts.
In today's fast-paced and ever-changing world, Michael Arata's "Frantic" paintings re-establishes folkloric symbols and art history icons that we all know, in a modern light. Some imagery has been passed through generations because of its universally applicable nature to hardships in the human, making them more valuable now than ever.
Arata’s use of proto-archetypal motifs of art history – like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci or the Venus by Botticelli – provides us with a secure ground of associations while adding a fantastic, humorous layer of fictitious narration like in the 12-painting series The 12 days of posing for Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. A fictitious 12 part graphic novel about the daily life of Mona Lisa while modeling at Leonardo’s studio.
His depictions of daily life take on the same strategy. Motifs which we are all familiar with, may it be from our physical interaction with people or from our abstracted daily life aka our media consumption. Motif a couple shouting at each other in Argument mirror the uncanny yet real life we live in respectively the life we consume. Here we are being lured into a straight forward „reality-tv“ aesthetic - ranging from our own personal interaction with real people to an apparent authentic representation of society when we consume the „real“ life out there via screen and social medias.
We think we know what we see in Arata’s paintings. Yet that’s just his tool to lure us is. Familiarity.
This is the power of Arata’s work: luring us into an unexpected dimension of what we think we do know already. With irony, fantastic narratives, brutal abstractions of social interaction... which we live through and consume from a safe distance day after day. Bright bold colors and rough, determined brush strokes overwhelm and seduce us – both so macho – yet executed in such a laconical way that our cortex can relax and the non-visceral parts of our head can dive into all these stories and narrations Arata confronts us with. Which we think we know – but we start reading anew.
— Wulf Boettger
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Michael Arata lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He received both his BFA and MFA from San Jose State University, San Jose. Recent solo and group exhibitions Arata participated in include All The People, Blue Wall, Ave 50 Gallery, Los Angeles CA; Me Too Candy, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena ,CA; Edge To Edge, Parnu, Tartu, Estonia; and What Is It Where Is It, Neutra Museum , Los Angeles, CA.