Michel Modell
Gallery Affiliations: 101 Exhibit
Region: South
City / State: Oxford, MD
My paintings investigate how humor facilitates the exposure of anomies, the social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values within a community. Cultural insight is layered behind comedic intent by way of archetypes built out of saturated transparent forms. Humor is not the end, but a means to afford access to topical issues and provides a fulcrum point between two simultaneous but oppositional viewpoints. This dichotomy of disposition is ever-present as I navigate through issues of personal identity, contemporary crisis, art history revisionism, and globalization of information. Be disgusted, be appalled, laugh out loud, or snort in protest. I promise I won’t tell if you indulge in a secret laugh.