Michael Stipe: Even the birds gave pause

Michael Stipe presenting a series of works-in-progress that continue an exploration of contemporary portraiture, instinct and abstraction.

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Classical and conceptual forms create a cohesive whole from seemingly disparate elements, and build what is hopefully an inclusive and complete vision, in which the familiar and unfamiliar are given equal grounding. These works-in-progress include plaster, concrete, rotocast plastics, ceramics, bookmaking, and darkroom photographic printing. Process and the documentation of process becomes a part of the whole. All of this is done in the buildup to a one person exhibition at the Ica Milano Foundation, opening in December 2023 into 2024.

Emphasizes artistic process...presenting diaristic portraits of friends alongside unfinished plaster sculptures, ceramics and darkroom prints.-- "The New York Times Book Review"
Stipe's employ of light and dark and seemingly disparate elements, together with photographic harmonies, results in alluring visions.--Steven Heller "PRINT"

As an undergraduate studio art major at the University of Georgia, Michael Stipe (born 1960) studied photography and painting before leaving school upon the formation of R.E.M., the band for which he served as frontman and singer/songwriter until its dissolution in 2011. The sensibility that he began to develop during his time as an art student transferred to the spectrum of his work for R.E.M., from art directing all graphic, video and stage design, to writing, composing and performance, and his iconoclastic personal style. Michael Stipe has published four monographs to date with Damiani: Volume 1 (2018), Our Interference Times: a visual record (2019), Michael Stipe (2021), Even the birds gave pause (2023).

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