Michael A. Robinson | Theatre of Balance
I met Michael A. Robinson at his New York solo show in midtown Manhattan, at the same time when I was introduced to his gigantic light ball: for a strong first impression, I don’t have a better material description for his breathtaking, unearthly installation The Origin of Ideas standing on its own at the otherwise empty loft gallery. It was only until I curated a show for him myself at SPRING/BREAK Art Show that I realized how labor-intensive and delicate his seemingly minimalist work is.
Interview Tansy Xiao
Photography Maude Arsenault
Michael with Field Intensity, suspended painting easels and wood, 2021.
Having to deconstruct and reconstruct his work to suit the exhibition space each time, Michael A. Robinson’s work is however not site-specific but rather transcending and transforming the site. From a massive orb composed of numerous lamps to a suspended structure of easels, his installations demonstrate how by mere repetition, objects of mundane nature can eventually attain a sublime quality: the architecture that resembles minimalist music and modern theater. In many of his pieces, objects are assembled into a radiant shape with a vacant center: like a perfect metaphor for the decentralized post-modern world.
Working in Canada and especially in Quebec, with access to rather generous grants for the arts, Michael has cultivated a way more idyllic attitude comparing to his market-driven peers in New York, or London. He would trace the roots of his thinking back through Deleuze, Spinoza, or even Lucretius. Idealist as he is, he seeks ways to construct his work without the material obstacles: without plinths, stands, or any floor support. Overall, Michael is an artist in the traditional sense that challenges the limitations of materials and medium, as well the way we perceive the materiality of our surroundings.
Vida, lucida, Toshiba, sofa, television, speakers, speaker cords (with audio edit from Sinoms by Michael Snow used with his geneous permission), 2016.
T: What’s your studio routine like? Has anything changed since the pandemic?
M: The one good thing about the pandemic has been the extra studio time. That said, there has been a funny meme floating around social media depicting two images of an artist working in their studio which are exactly the same. The captions read: ‘Artists before covid’ and Artists during covid’. It’ funny and there is some truth in that.
Apart from the cancelled shows not much has changed. I like to spend as much time in the studio as possible. That said, I don’t pressure myself to produce like a maniac all the time. I like the pauses, the time to reflect and think about what to make next. It’s essential to me. I mean anything can be made right? For me the question is what deserves to be made.
T: You mentioned that you had a gallery before you went to college. How did everything begin?
M: I was 19 and travelling when I discovered that I was an artist. Actually, it was a Buddhist rock drummer in Paris who first designated me an artist. Sitting in his apartment above the Seine he just blurted out, ‘You’re an artist’; and so, I became one. It seemed like a good idea at the time!
Back in Canada I was lucky enough to have had no pressure to choose a career path and I had no other interests apart from art. Soon I was surrounded by artists. Where I lived and worked there were very few contemporary art galleries. Some of my friends and I started to ask around when we saw empty spaces. Soon three of us had galleries all within one block of the National Gallery of Canada. My basement space was called Gallery UHF. I had no real program, things just evolved from show to show. People took notice though and soon the local papers covering the shows. The openings were always full to capacity. I enjoyed it immensely and I still have the urge to curate shows today. The last exhibition was my own first solo and my first show as a sculptor having previously dabbled in painting. It was a success and I soon had representation at another gallery. This all happened before my bachelors so I had a great start.
T: This is cliché but, who are your favorite artists? Have your aesthetics in art changed over time?
M: This is cliché but Marcel Duchamp. Discovering Duchamp’s ready-mades as a young artist was the revelation that I absolutely needed. For me the idea that I could designate anything as my art freed me in a way that was essential. To this day I regard Dada as the most important art movement as it relates to Contemporary Art. I think that one of the best questions that a younger artist can ask themselves today is still, ‘What is not art that I would want to become art?’.
Changes in my aesthetics are always linked to problems that I encounter while working. For example, for at least ten years I was torn between understanding my works from a purely formal perspective vs understanding them from a purely conceptual perspective. I know this sounds odd but these two seemingly irreconcilable tendencies form the cornerstone of how I see my work today. That said, a successful work of mine will have these two tendencies working in grand concert.
The Aestheticization of Exchange, 1995. Michael A. Robinson with Jacques Derrida, with paster cast, 35x45 cm. Photo by Luis Molina Pantin.
T: How did your sojourn in France influence you and your work? I saw that you had a brief encounter with Jacques Derrida there.
M: In the mid-1990s I did my master’s degree at Université de Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne. It was a great way to learn French and to be introduced to the international scene. Coincidently I had been invited for a residency at L’Hôpital éphémère in Montmartre. It was a kind of anarchist art squat for musicians and visual artists. I was supposed to be there for six weeks but I ended up staying for an entire year. It was here that I met artist Thomas Hirshhorn and curator and art critic Nicholas Bourriaud.
As well, at that time interest in French thinkers and Postmodernism in the visual arts was peaking. Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard were all still alive and Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault had just recently passed away. I had started auditing Jacques Derrida’s classes at the École Normale Supérieure and enjoyed it even though my French was quite limited at the time. Watching him pull up in his red Toyota Corolla his famous white hair blowing in the wind was thrilling.
After a few weeks I came up with the idea of creating a work of relational art with him. I created a cast piece inspired by his famous experimental work Glas. A photographer friend was in Paris visiting and I asked him to accompany me to one of the classes. After the class I approached him to offer him the work. Titled, The Aestheticization of Exchange, 1994. I explained to him that the panel was for him and that his acceptance of the work would complete it. He graciously accepted as my friend snapped a few pictures. It was definitely one of the highlights of my time in Paris.
The art scene in Paris at that time was really insular and pop. I was hard to break in unless you were French. I remember naively skulking from gallery to gallery in the Marais with my slides and my CV under my arm. I laugh now but it was kind of depressing. One gallerist just said straight out, ‘We are not looking for artists and we don’t meet with artists.’ I left in tears!
T: That’s exactly how capitalists do their gate-keeping. They don’t know what they had missed! Your work uses balance a lot, with each of the element hung from a separate string. Why all the labor-intensive work instead of just having a single piece that stands on the ground?
M: I think that this has to do with the fact that I am most comfortable working in large format. I like the relationship that a larger work has to the body and to the experience of spectators. And it’s true that sculptors are limited by what they can get out of the doorways of their studios. This explains my ‘some assembly required’ approach to sculptural installation. It’s also easier to transport. As concerns my interest in suspended work, I think that it has to do with the desire to do away with things like plinths and floor supports. A sculpture just seems so visually and physically accessible if you can get rid of those things. For me it’s a way of inviting the spectator to come closer to the work, to interact in a way that forces them to move around and see the work from different angles.
T: How does each of your assemblage piece start? Did you have specific plans of how things would be positioned?
M: It depends on the work. During my day-to-day studio practice, I’m much more inclined to be intuitive. I work with materials that I have found and try things out. I take a lot of pictures. But the larger works are often conceptualized in advance. That said, there is often a split second ‘ah ha!’ moment when something great occurs to me. After that I just get convicted. I follow the idea even if it is very labor intensive until I am satisfied. It can take weeks. Those larger works often have formal and technical challenges that require a lot of thought. Luckily, I’m usually very inspired which makes the work feel effortless. I have a lot of enthusiasm for art making. This has been a real blessing to me.
T: Your work is often large in scale. Not in the sense of magnifying small day-to-day objects directly, but to collect and recompose them in a theatrical manner to establish a sublime quality. Do you create chaos in order, or order in chaos?
M: To me those two things are like the opposite sides of the same coin. In my classes I sometimes ask students to create a small work that represents order and then another that represents chaos. You wouldn’t think so but they often look the similar. The fun starts when I ask them do the same exercise for ‘ping’ and ‘pong’.
The Origin of Ideas, lamps, metal supports, electric cords, LED lights, 2013-2020. Photo by Denis Farley.
T: A recurring element in your work is light, not only in The Origin of Ideas where dozens of lamps are assembled into a massive orb, but also in many of the other installations as part of the set. Please elaborate the functionality of light in your work.
M: When I work with light, I think of how it blankets the rest of the materials creates a sense of immersion for the viewer. I also think about ambience and how light expresses moods and ideas. Don’t forget that one of the origins of installation art is the theatre’s mise en scène.
T: If you can create a piece with any materials in the world at any location, what’s your wildest dream? I know this is impossible because our limitations are part of who we are, but try to imagine something.
M: Funny you should ask me that question right now! I have a work that I desperately want to create that unfortunately is beyond my means. It would be the largest work that I have ever made. It’s an immersive double spherical sound installation created entirely of different sized speakers pointed towards the center of the work, so away from the spectator. Visually, it recalls my work The Origin of Ideas, 2013, except that it is composed of two large spheres that meet organically at the center kind of like an hourglass on its side. The wordless sounds which don’t exist except in my imagination move from one side of the work, above and below, and I can imagine spectators trying to ‘see’ the sound as it moves.
T: You are actually one of the artists who got discovered on Instagram a lot. Being a traditional medium artist in academia, how do you feel about that?
M: I love social media. I embrace it. I love how it has opened up the art world and democratized the possibilities for artists to reach larger audiences easily. I also believe in the power of images to carry much of the meaning and impact of artworks. Even for sculpture. Nothing will ever take away the impact of actually seeing art and moving around it with your body, that’s a given, but if we are honest with ourselves most of what we know of art and especially about art history has been discovered by way of images.
The story was published in noisé issue 01 The Solstice.