Michal Gavish
Gallery Affiliations: Sandra Lee Gallery
Region: Pacific Coast
Website: http://michalgavish.com
City / State: Palo Alto, CA
My layered painting installations examine the ambiguity of memory as a historical source. Using imagery from old photographs, my work involves documentary processes along with their critique.
I paint larger-than-life full-body portraits that reenact personal histories. I then carry the portraits in ritual theatrical processions to the locations where the photographs were originally taken. Finally, I install the works in my studio and paint dioramas of domestic period rooms around them. In questioning the certainty of conviction in a memorial process, this performance painting process ends up in the realm of uncertainty, probing the line between fact and fiction.