Juxtapoz Art and Culture-Spring_2019

100 SPRING 2019

earing the end of a decade

that’s felt like a lifetime, it feels

like our world has grown weary.

A once-omnipresent optimism

has given way to an absurd kind

of acceptance, and each time there appears to be

an answer, it is just as quickly hosed down the

ideological stream into obscurity. Echoing many

before him, the prolific singer-songwriter Jeff

Tweedy once crooned, “Every generation thinks

it’s the end of the world,” and this is certainly not

the only time we’ve imagined that it might all be

coming to halt. The fact that many of us have heard

that sentiment, regardless of our familiarity with

Wilco, might signal that this too shall pass, but, boy,

it sure doesn’t feel like it.

When the world hits times like these, artists

get to work, gathering the pure feeling from the

volksgeist and naming it with their work. The

British painter Antony Micallef has consistently

dug his hands into the proverbial soil, excavating

biting social commentaries for the better part of

the last two decades. However, in recent years,

Micallef has imbued his paintings with a raw,

personal emotion that cannot be ignored. They

seem to communicate a direct confrontation with

our collective suffering, translating the confusion,

exhaustion, and pain into an image that speaks

at deafening volume. Days spent covered in paint,

drained from the emotionally and physically

taxing process, he brings such feelings to light,

or, in his own words, he “unearths them.” His

powerful portraits bring the conversation from

collective alienation to communal understanding,

stripping the subject of everything but its

humanity. In the same way that the boogeyman

is scary because no one knows what he looks like,

so are fears that we cannot describe. Micallef

shows us the face of the boogeyman, so that we

might remember that the human spirit contains

immaculate beauty in its imperfection.

Eben Benson: My first impression from your

paintings was that they felt immediately violent.

However, the intriguing thing was that they

aren’t inherently violent, and, upon further

inspection, they have a softness. What are

the most common initial reactions or words

associated with your art?

Antony Micallef: I think the violence of the paint

is just one aspect of how the paint is physically

applied. I see the distortion technique as a tool to

describe things that I could never say if I painted

in a more representational manner. Oil paint is,

in its nature, an incredibly versatile thing. You

essentially use coloured bits of earth from the

ground and throw it at a canvas, hoping to make

more than just an inanimate object. When you use

paint in such vast quantities, the paint becomes

very physical and malleable. It folds, curls, and

moves. It can be sculpted, pushed, pulled, and

thrown, no longer solely depicting an image or

a representational portrayal. The very nature

of the medium is the expression, and if used

in a successful way, can create the work itself.

Sometimes it feels like excavating an aura. A great

piece of art makes you feel something. It makes

you feel human when you look at it. To have

different emotions reverberating from one piece is

always a lucky strike as it’s able to communicate

on different levels. Like a person in conversation,

you don't want your art to give away everything it

has to say in one moment. You don’t want your art

to be predictable.

Could you describe your personal relationship

with politics? Your Trump series comes amidst

a pattern of deeply personal and emotional

paintings. Does your connection to politics and

critique originate from a personal trait?

I’ve always been interested in politics, and I’m a

news junkie. I think what I find fascinating about

our current times is that everything feels like it’s

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Above (left and right): Trump Fags series, 2016-17