Michael Mosher

Michael Mosher
Northampton, Massachusetts, USA

STATEMENT

My practice primarily consists of hand-cut collages that depict and comment on aspects of American culture using the compositional tools of religious iconography. This conceptual framework is heavily influenced by my undergraduate religious studies background, which focused on the religious history of the United States. My work is inspired by photomontage artists like Jess, Hannah Höch, and Martha Rosler as well as religious paintings like those of Hans Memling, Heironymous Bosch, or Augustin Lesage. I attempt to create a fusion of the compositional density and structure of religious painting with the political satire and commentary of photomontage. I use these compositional and conceptual tools to depict religious themes in American pop culture, politics, and its relationship with technology. There are two major appeals of this practice for myself as an artist: the physical act of collecting, cataloging, cutting, and arranging the paper collage elements, which I view as a meditative or contemplative practice; and the intellectual act of distilling current events and social commentary through collage. The source material of my collages are primarily late twentieth-century magazines like National Geographic, AIA Journal, LIFE Magazine, but recently I’ve been focusing on collecting a wider variety of more recent source material. Each collage is hand-cut and pasted on paper and then scanned using a large-scale rolling scanner.

BIO

I am a collage artist and Printmedia MFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am currently working remotely from my studio in Easthampton, MA. My collage work is heavily influenced by my undergrad Religious Studies background. Through collage, I explore religious themes in modern times, specifically the ways in which capitalism, politics, technology, and pop culture mirror or emulate qualities of organized religion. As part of my MFA study, I am beginning to experiment with different ways of reappropriating my collages using video, projection, and installation.

ARTIST CONTACT

[click to email]
www.mikeymosher.com

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