Michael Pajon
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Michael Pajon STATEMENT “Standard American” explores the natural intrigue of finding and handling an object to consider its history. This group of work contemplates the most humble of human remains: old matchbooks from junk shops, antique postcards and books, sheet music from my great aunt’s collection, Cracker Jack toys that belonged to my mother, and other objects once treasured, lost and resurrected. By collaging these elements amid drawings and other media, I create small relationships to arrive at a whole image. Like delicate strands of DNA, these tiny pieces, in combination hold the key to unique identity. This identity reflects the best and worst of Americans, the common as well as the fantastic. These inevitable contradictions are the foundation on which identity is built. The artifacts and images employed in this work evoke a sense of place and history. They entice the viewer to slow down and take in a landscape of information and clues. The work offers a roadmap of an America that seems both imagined and real, a blending of true artifact and an artificial past, a fleeting glimpse and a memory not quite placed. BIO Michael Pajon was raised in a working class family in the southwest suburbs of Chicago where he occupied his time bicycling, wandering around half-constructed homes, and building forts in cornfields. At the age of ten, his Grandmother walked him to his first comic book store where he promptly raided the twenty-five cent bin. Through this newly found hobby he taught himself to draw by copying the pages of Frank Miller’s Batman, Jim Lee’s X-Men, and EC comic reprints. He had also developed a habit of collecting not only comics, but old magazines and things that most would deem trash. He later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 2003 with a focus in printmaking, gravitating to the graphic nature of the medium that closely resembled the comics he loved. He worked closely as an assistant and then studio manager to renowned artist Tony Fitzpatrick. During this time he started making assemblages of the bits and pieces he had accumulated from alleys, junkshops, and thrift stores, slicing up old children’s book covers and rearranging their innards into disjointed narratives. In 2009 he left Chicago and headed south, settling in New Orleans. He admits to being attracted to the city by its stories and food, but mostly by its architecture, that is in a uniquely gorgeous constant state of decay. He has exhibited internationally, most recently with Jonathan Ferrara Gallery at the VOLTA 10 Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland. He has had solo exhibitions in Houston in 2008 and in New Orleans in 2011 and 2012. He was hand-picked by former Prospect Director/Curator Dan Cameron to participate in Prospect 1.5 and Prospect 2. When not in his studio, he can be found out wandering on the levee, enjoying the Mississippi with his dog Marge. ARTIST CONTACT [click to email] IMAGES
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