MICHAEL COUGHLAN
(USA)
More than simply hybrids or blends of modernism, surrealism or conceptual art, Coughlan’s work moves beyond tribute iconography or sardonic homage to dated art fashion trends by tapping his existing surroundings in Los Angeles and own mortality. Lost desert landscapes unfold with new meaning when the literal translation of content or glorified remembrance of a specific art style is emptied out, jiggled up and poured back in.
Before painting or working with pastels begins, Coughlan’s drawings develop through a type of self- exploratory automatic writing. The pen on paper images then serve as model sketches for pastels, and later his paintings. Never incognizant of the medium being used or how to attempt the subversion of its conventions, Coughlan always shows regard for the particular qualities of a medium by occupying a position or representing a condition midway between the extremes of its differences and similarities to other mediums. His streams of intentionally melancholic distractions then filter through an idiosyncratic perception of the absurd to emerge as uniquely ordered, humorous and perfectly correct sense-giving strategies. For the viewer, the results become something more experiential and sometimes even inspirational.
Michael Coughlan’s solo exhibitions have been seen in Europe, Los Angeles and New York. He earned an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1991 and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design for Painting in 1988. He is the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant (1996) and was a recent resident artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Michael Coughlan have several times exhibited in Stalke Galleri through the years
PUBLISHED 27.11.2014
SIZE 32X39MM (COMBINATION IN FULL PRINT SHEETS)
G66 AUNTITLEDED 540
G66 BUNTITLEDED 540
G66FF FIRST DAY COVER (A+B) ED 14 SIGN
MICHAEL COUGHLAN
PUBLISHING DAY 19.4.2021
G109A-E EDITION 280
FIRST DAY COVER ED 18 EACH.
Artstamp.dk is excited to present a set of six new stamps by Los Angeles artist Michael Coughlan.
These new stamps include images taken from Coughlan’s suite of charcoal drawings Laconic Distillations - Psychic Landscape Series.
In these works Coughlan continues his exploration of material and form, combining art historical and cultural tropes as filtered through his own idiosyncratic sensibility. The resulting images have a psychological tension, immediacy, and sense of humor that can be seen as an attempt to describe and deconstruct a contemporary human condition.
More than simply hybrids or blends of modernism, surrealism or conceptual art, Coughlan’s work moves beyond tribute iconography by tapping his existing surroundings in Los Angeles and own mortality. Lost desert landscapes unfold with new meaning when the literal translation of content or glorified remembrance of a specific art style is emptied out, jiggled up and poured back in.
