Michael Converse
The drawings, paintings, and collages of Michael Converse conjure a fantasy world that stands between André Breton’s Surrealist categories of “psychic automatism” and dislocated realism. Employing varying degrees of illusory naturalism within a process that seems purely stream-of-consciousness, Converse builds open-ended landscapes, figures, narratives, and dialogues out of his shaky lines and colors, and juxtaposed objects and images, calling to mind work ranging from the punk illustrations of Raymond Pettibon to the naughty faux-abstraction of Sue Williams to the sprawling installations of Mike Kelley.
In some of his most memorable and deceptively simple drawings, Converse converts familiar images seemingly derived from our collective memory—such as advertisements, children’s books, comics— into scenarios underscoring the originals’ undercurrents of sex and violence. Rendered with dense, dripping lines, these drawings appear to sag and morph before our eyes: turning a strolling yuppie couple in 1970s après-ski gear into a pair of leering corpses; Dumbo the elephant into a saw-toothed carnivore, mid-meal; and pirates and warriors into demons who appear to rise from primordial goo.
The visceral, writhing quality that seems to permeate so many of Converse’s drawings dominates his paintings and installations as well. His swirling, ten-by-thirty-foot mash-up of drawings and paintings tacked, pinned, and taped together for the 2004 Charlotte Street Awards exhibition served as a point of departure for more recent installations at the Kansas City Home Show and the Art Omi residency program. In both these 2005 installations, the artist’s drawings literally came off the wall to not only overtake but consume the environments in which they were placed, as sheets, wallpaper, and even furniture found their way into the undulating fabric of these monumental collages.
Curator and critic Stacy Switzer has succinctly stated the unsettling appeal of Michael Converse’s work: “Intimate, daring, and emotionally charged, Converse’s works map a landscape of abject trauma and transformation.” It has also proven influential; in 2006 exhibitions such as the Telephonebooth Gallery’s klusterfudge and Jon Peck and Jaimie Warren’s traveling Whoop Dee Doo, Converse has been clearly poised as an elder statesman to an emerging generation of young artists enthralled with his vision.
—Maria Elena Buszek
