Paintings by Michael Stamm
Michael Stamm’s work, using literature, design, and autobiographical sources, examines the need for human relationships in an increasingly interconnected but alienated world. Raised in Illinois, he received his BA at Wesleyan University in West Virginia and an MA in English Literature from Columbia University; he later earned a MFA from New York University in 2016. Stamm also attended in 2016 the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, an intensive nine-week residency program for emerging visual artists.
Stamm’s work explores the themes of identity, spiritual and physical wellness, the individual’s innate decision capacity, and the issue of self-doubt. While other gay artists often use erotic imagery in their work, he takes everyday, mundane imagery and codes it with queer history, thus transforming it into archetypes. Throughout Stamm’s body of work,
text highlights the talkative self-awareness implicit in his paintings. Whether functioning as the headspace of the artist, of the subject, or an omniscient voice, the use of text animates a thought into an object.
During his MFA work at the New York University, Stamm had his first solo exhibition “Just Like This Please” at the Thierry Goldberg Gallery. From this period came his “April 26,, 2016” series, a work consisting of nine small panels depicting the same corner of his studio at different times of the day. Michael Stamm produced the 2017 “Tincture” series of seven larger paintings, a more refined and surreal series incorporating the human figure as a design element in the terrazzo-like textured works. The tightly composed surfaces of his paintings are formed by applying thin glazes in multiple layers; and his portrayal of human bodies are highly stylized and often cropped.
In early 2018, Michael Stamm exhibited a group of eight portraits of his therapist, each painting showing her in a different session, but only depicted as a torso in various modes of dress and decoration. The paintings’ outlandish jewelry, inspired by Stamm’s own therapist, is overlaid by poetry, text from cybernetics textbooks, and lyrics from pop songs. His most recent series at the Shulamit Nazarian gallery in Los Angeles, entitled “So Super Sorry Sir”, is currently running from January 16th to March 6th of 2021.
Michael Stamm’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in New York at DC Moore Gallery and Thierry Goldberg, and has been included in several group exhibitions, including shows at Deli Gallery, New York; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Taymour Grahne Projects, London; Galerie Tobias Naehring, Leipzig, and Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles.
For more information and exhibitions, the artist’s site is located at: https://michaelstamm.com