Michael Fells• Bio
A mixed-media artist, Michael D. Fels received his M.F.A. in printmaking.
His art has been shown in Taiwan, New Zealand, Chicago, DC and New York City. Michael will have oil paintings and mixed media works on display at an upcoming show at the District Gallery. While Michael's degree is in printmaking, his work has continually moved toward mixed media installations via his inculcation of material syntax, the juxtaposition of varying materials.
Michael D. Fels taught for ten years at The Pennsylvania State University before joining the faculty at Elon University three years ago. Head of the Foundations Department at Elon, Fels continues his exploration of art and its physical boundaries through both his teaching and his artmaking.
Artist Statement
Although schooled as a printmaker and painter, installation art comes naturally to me. As a graduate student I was difficult to define. My painting instructors believed I was an installation artist at heart. My printmaking instructors wondered if I wasn't actually a painter. Uncertain about what to call myself, I knew that I was intrigued by physical spaces and the possibilities within them.
A decade later this is still true. I love shadows cast on walls; I love how light determines mood. I love how the physical space and the rawness of materials play off of one another. In other words, material syntax "the juxtaposition of varying materials" is central to my artmaking, as is a curiosity about how physical space defines the art within it and how art influences its domain.
Instead of setting up a canvas and painting over "disguising" it, I continually question material syntax. Rather than adding marks, materials and layers to a surface, I reduce marks. I pay close attention to the original surface. I restrict the amount of layers. I delight in how materials are changed when adjoined with another. Preconceived ideas about paintings and sculptures can shift radically when attention is directed toward material syntax. What initially is seen as temporal may be transformed into something more permanent. The unsightly becomes alluring. The profane becomes sacrosanct.
My art making goes beyond canvas and pedestal. The frame becomes part of the image. Lights mounted within metal boxes and atop frames attract the viewer's attention one way or avert it in another. Electric cords create both physical line and implied line through shadows cast on the floor, walls and other pieces of art. Magnified glass and optically distorted glass, mounted on or in front of pieces, enlarge certain portions of textured plaster while obscuring others.
I invite myself and others to slow down in order to better discern space and object. My intent is to discover the miniscule. With this discovery, the miniscule becomes monumental. The subtle becomes obvious. Questions about art and non-art become irrelevant. In many ways, the viewer's alerted aesthetic sensibility is the art itself. The viewer's movements within the physical space become the catalyst for how the work interacts with itself, the surroundings, and the viewer.