Michael Amrose: Abstraction
© Michael Amrose
Curatorial Statement
Calling it what it is
The current VASA exhibition by Michael Amrose entitled “Abstraction” brings to the viewer a visual experience not bound to the external world, re-representations of what we believe to be out there, but is grounded in an internal experience of form, color, space, line and pattern. (I should note that I believe that all experience is internal, it lives within us and it is nothing till we call it as such. It is the process of calling that lives within the world of language, culture, society and history.)
Photography’s roots are found in the re-presentation of objects, spaces and details recorded through a lens and onto a responsive surface (film or chip). Early viewers marveled at the camera’s (and operator) ability to record the world around us. As the technology improved, processes and treatments evolved (darkrooms to lightrooms), so did our cultural thirst for seeing environments never before experienced. Cameras placed inside the human body to recording devices planted in objects traveling into deep space, camera produced images impacted how we understand the universe; ourselves and the place we live in. The magic of photography, lens made imagery, is its ability to re-present the world we know; the image was our mirror.
The work of Michael Amrose moves us to another location, not the external world of objects and mirrors, representations with historical socially attached meanings, but to an internal one where experience is not based upon predefined meanings, but an internal translation, not fixed by the lens, but fluid within the mind.
Color, form, line, (the illusion of) texture, space and contrast are the tools of abstract art. Amrose’s work entitled “Abstraction” is removed from representational signification, entering the realm of imagination. His work means nothing until the viewer (or reader) says it does. He does not give or provide an easy entry to significance, no titles, just experience. The viewer experiences his imagery not concerned with what it is, but what it becomes.
Meaning is a challenge with abstract art. Differing from representational imagery, tied to the world of cultural meanings and language, mean in abstract art is found within the experience of the reader. When no index is provided, no signification is provided, the construction of meaning is not tied to the external world, a world historically and socially defined, but to the experience itself, one of sense and intuition. The viewer/reader of the image talks to them self as they move through space, color, line and surface looking for a partner to connect their external world of meanings and significance to their visual one.
Experience is critical to understanding Amrose’s images. The images are not sequential but build a sequence, a visual connection between visual experiences (the linear design of the exhibition). It is here that the mind is challenged to construct meaning, to make sense out of the visual. Color, form, line and space dance to the mind’s music in an attempt to understand, bring order and understanding. The experience may not be satisfying or complete, or it may be rich with comfort, requiring the viewer to take time for the mind to wander and hold a willingness to live with uncertainty.
It is the uncertainty of knowing, the need to wait that is critical, to feel the mind exploring possibilities, trying to make sense, looking for meanings and dealing with released feelings and emotions. The imagery of Michael Amrose challenges the viewer to read his text, to take the time, to dance.
© Roberto Muffoletto 2019