MICHAEL GIBSON
PRESS
October 2002
Michael Gibson's new work provides a refreshing foray back to the pleasure of painting. Explorations of color combinations, surface texture and spatial compositions take precedence over subject matter and conceptual ideology.
Ranging from 3 to 8 feet in height, the paintings all incorporate the same elements: small amoeba-shaped patches of color--some solid and some hollow--on a flat, monochromatic ground. Gibson develops these resonant surfaces by applying layer after layer of thinned enamel to masonite or wood panels; he then applies the forms, usually in lighter tones. Around the outer edge of the solid shapes he adds a line of white that blurs into the background. From a distance, this final touch gives the forms a three-dimensional quality; they appear to float above the panel's surface. When viewed up close, the lighter rings create the opposite effect. The edges seem to come forward, causing the center color to recede into the flat background.
While this same method is applied to each work in the exhibition, the results are stunningly different. In Tonal Shift, light blue patches are painted onto a rich grass-green ground. The chromatic shift between the two colors is so slight that the border where they meet appears to vibrate. Their similarity of value also makes them seem to occupy the same plane, as if the blue patches were actually melding into the green background. By contrast, in Currency Converter, patches of the same light blue and green appear on a somber brick-red ground. The dramatic tonal disjunction between figure and ground changes the focus of the work from color relationships to composition.
The orientation and density of the color shapes are carefully balanced in Gibson's works, and the allover distribution of the shapes gives the impression that the painting is part of a larger whole. Luminous biomorphic forms appear to extend beyond the edges of the panels, suggesting these paintings could be part of some continuous molecular configuration.
Art in America
by Rebecca Dimling Cochran
Currency Converter, 2001
enamel on wood, 55 x 48 inches