If the soul and the ego were objects we could look at, the soul would be a translucent heart beating.
George Condo
Michael Alfe, a young San Francisco painter, paints pompadoured youths who wander in perspectivally twisted interior-exterior spaces vomiting crystaline lines of jewel-like paint. He paints still lifes whose main element may be blazing lamp shaped like a football. He paints houses squatted in curved spaced landscapes in timeless day-nights with cigarette butts raining onto astro-turf lawns and cubist trees.
His surfaces shimmer with changes from gloss to matte, thick to thin, rough to smooth.
Painful, frightening, and sinister events are rendered elegantly with glistening or velvety paint. The painting here, Space Geishas, was done in collaboration with his wife, Dru Kim.
Michael Alfe and Dru Kim.
Dru Kim.
Michael Alfe.
Michael Alfe.
Originally published in
Georgia Marsh, Paul Bowles, Michael McClard, Olivier Mosset & Fred Brathwaite, and Duncan Hannah. Cover by Mary Heilmann.
If the soul and the ego were objects we could look at, the soul would be a translucent heart beating.
George Condo