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Set in flat, non-existent space, these simplified forms whose contours are bold and
energized and animated calligraphically by line and colour, fuse into one another in
a fiction of shifting points of view.
From the innocent eyes of infancy to the surfeited ones of age is a journey in which
we ceaselessly read and interpret faces. The ambiguities achieved in Michael Close’s
visions are mirrored in our own experiences of immediate emotions to real people whose
aspects then blur, coalesce then disappear to vibrate in the memory of forms and colours.
It is the artist’s intention in these works to combine a variety of elements and
experiences to serve the conveyance of truth and beauty to his viewers in the spirit
of the freedom in which they were created.
Michael Close was born and raised in Toronto, Canada and received his education at the
University of Guelph, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute and Ontario College of Art.
He was exhibiting his art and winning numerous awards even before finishing high school.
From his first one-man show in 1977 at Gallery 76 (Toronto) operated by Ontario
College of Art, to his most recent one in Biuro Wystaw Actystysznych "Art Stilon"
Museum (Poland 1993), the artist has exhibited in numerous solo shows as well as
group shows from 1973 to 1993.
He has also worked extensively in Scientific Art and Design for many notable films
and TV shows such as Three Men and a Baby, Anne of Green Gables, Police Academy 3,
and Alfred Hitchcock (TV series), just to mention a few. His work has been reviewed
by many newspapers, TV and radio stations from around the world.
Cosimo Stifani, Art Critic has this to say about Michael Close:
"What is the most important thing to you and I? PEOPLE." Such laconic sentence could
only be proffered by a person whose intent and constant endeavor in life has been to
bring to light a glimpse of that nature shared by all human beings. This person is
Michael Close, an active artist residing in Toronto where he works and lives with
his wife Menka and daughters Alexandra and Melanie.
Close’s artwork, which may appear simple and direct, is the culmination of a style
that began with Abstract Expressionism in the early seventies and then eventually
developed into its truly distinctive form: pictographic representational figure in
a triangular setting. After the euphoric years spent at the University of Guelph
and the Ontario College of Art, the artist began to depart from the objectless
feelings of Abstract Expressionism and move into the world of history: from the
abstract to the representational. But in the process of objectifying the historicity
of humankind he had (a) to translate into images the literary sources assimilated
by the cultural baggage of the individual, and (b) to attempt to make accessible
to the viewer a glimpse of the image’s universality.
It appears that Close is reverting somewhat to Panovsky dictum that "in a work of
art, ‘form’ cannot be divorced from ‘content’ ". But content of what? "Well, if my
work aims to explore the universality of truth present in each and every one of us,
" replies Close, "then my objective as an artist is to capture the expression of the
particular that converges to the form of the universal." In other words, through
his triangular faces the artist attempts to capture the historicity of the moment
and eventually leading to the visualization of the universal. Thus, the artist becomes
the homo faber, the maker, the one that makes us see the phenomenon.
Perhaps E.G. Gombrich was partly right in asserting that there is no such thing as
ART but only artists. Leonardo Da Vinci, who strongly believed that man could reveal
some Godly traits, went on to demonstrate this Renaissance conceptualization by
proving that the human’s perfect image is achieved when the arms’ aperture is equal
to the body’s height. By having the image of the human being at the centre of the
squared circle Leonardo demonstrated that the descent of the universal to the
particular was complete, and Ficino’s Platonism was finally immortalized by the
intellect of the visual arts. Close, on the other hand, is strongly convinced that
the obsessed individualism of our age is invisibly connected to the historicity
of time. Whatever, or whoever may be out there, certainly did not play the dice;
and the artist, like the maker, sculpts with Godly strokes the happiness and
tribulations that weave the tapestry of our age of uncertainty. Such is the
art of Michael Close: precise, concise, indelible.
His works are in the permanent collection of:
Michael Close had more than fifteen solo shows
in museums around the world.
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As early as the 1970’s, in his abstract paintings set in triangular supports,
Michael Close has sought the synthesis of both the intellect and the sensual
in an attempt to arrive at some universal truth. The work with triangles led
him to focus on images of the human face to which we all respond, more or less
intensely; some eliciting emotional sensations, others appealing directly to our
intellect. Both share an essential rank as we have as much need of one as the other.
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