Michel Modell
War is Over?
Watercolor on canvas
2011
My paintings investigate how humor facilitates the exposure of anomies, social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values within a community. Cultural insight is layered behind comedic intent by way of archetypes built out of saturated transparent forms. Humor is not the end, but a means to afford access to topical issues and provides a fulcrum point between two simultaneous but oppositional viewpoints. This dichotomy of disposition is ever-present as I navigate through issues of personal identity, contemporary crisis, art history revisionism and globalization of information.
Be disgusted, be appalled, laugh out loud or snort in protest. I promise I won’t tell if you indulge in a secret laugh.