Hey New Haven!
Join us at Michael Angelis' studio as we introduce his newest body of artwork "Disposable|Aesthetics."
One Day Only Event
Sunday, September 16th
1 - 6pm
169 East Street | Foundry Square
New Haven, CT 06511
This exhibition is to introduce the new body of watercolors and woodcuts, and celebrate Michael's collaboration with Lunch Money Print.
To the Disposable|Aesthetics collection
Show Statement by the Artist
People spend a good amount of their lives thinking about food: the lack of it, the labor and energy involved in producing it, the quantities wasted, the control of production and distribution from independent farmers to gigantic chemical corporations. Food serves up quite a bit of information about the culture and society consuming it.
As wasteful as it is, there’s something quite aesthetically interesting about some take-out packaging, especially Chinese food. The phrase “Chinese food” in the states and many other western countries means a certain expected branding of food styles. Typically not traditionally Chinese at all, the marketing and presentation of the food is entirely based on design in the same way other styles of mass-consumable food is. The food packaging reflects this, with its sumi brush-style fonts and images of red pagodas. The “origami” container, forever linked to Chinese takeout specifically, was invented in Chicago originally for selling oysters.
Determining the rub between authenticity and appropriation creates hot spots, and the art world is no different. Picasso stole African tribal motifs to pad his avant-garde acclaim. Warhol turned the joke on itself and still manages to piss people off who don’t get it. Kehinde Wiley repurposes “canonical works” through the lens of contemporary American black culture. Look beyond these major examples and you’ll find appropriation at almost every turn, as artists knowingly or unknowingly appropriate imagery and ideas from the influences that bore them.
I’ve always loved spoofs and puns, and even in drawings I made as a young child I was lampooning TV ads and products. In this series, making trash into art and maybe art into trash has been interesting and enjoyable. Artwork is often held at a higher esteem than other items in the marketplace, and in Disposable Aesthetics I’m offering an homage to one of the richest symbols of Western culture. A take-out container perfectly exemplifies Western capitalist ideals and aspirations: the appropriation of another culture in order to sell readily available, globally harvested, mass-consumable fast food, one individual serving at a time. It represents the irony about what is actually valued, that is, the design of the pre-destined trash might be of much higher quality than the product inside it.
See the Disposable|Aesthetics collection
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Michael Angelis - The Artist
Born 1977 in Haverhill, MA. Graduated BFA SUNY Purchase 2000 with a concentration in painting and printmaking. Graduated with Masters of Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2005. Full-time studio art teacher in a public high school in Fairfield County, CT from 2005 to present. Michael resides and maintains a private studio in New Haven, CT.
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Christopher O'Flaherty - Co-Founder of LMP
Chris has a visual arts background with a BFA in Painting from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. He is currently based in Connecticut, and his favorite print medium is woodcut.
email: chris(at)lunchmoneyprint.com
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Mark Donne - Co-Founder of LMP
Mark has a passion for film and researching the latest technology start-up. Mark received a BA in Film, New Media, and Marketing from Fairfield University, and has since worked with numerous start-ups.
email: mark(at)lunchmoneyprint.com
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