EXHIBITION PRESS RELEASE

HemingwayArt presents Wild Life an exhibition of works by Michael Ajerman. The exhibition presents several years of paintings generated from time leading up to the pandemic, the Lockdown itself, and the new world that we find ourselves in.

Beginning with work made in residence in Los Angeles, California Ajerman further explores contained interior scenes in Tight Hamstrings, Medium. Along with bodily interactions with the elements through the raw activity of surfing with His Wave, Christmas Morning.

The pandemic brought heavy questions to Ajerman with output of work coming to a snails pace. The completed painting, Night Walk references an amateur video that went viral of a woman descending her dog on a leash out a high apartment window. Filmed during Italy’s complete Lockdown, Ajerman felt the image incapsulated previous disease outbreaks in Italian history, while addressing the importance of daily life carrying on in any situation.

The months that followed Ajerman walked a curious path where the validity of art and art making really came into question.  His response to his struggle was the animal motif. While animals had appeared in his work from time to time. The cat motif became precedent as his world began to have a four-legged visitor. 

Ajerman describes this as:

‘One night a cat from the neighborhood, broke in, sneaking through my window. It has been frequent and infrequent visits ever since. On one of those visits I attempted to draw him. Dogs might be tricked into posing, cats do not pose. Possibility for a stationary sitting is never granted. Moving wherever they wish, stretching while sleeping. Putting my sense of drawing and my wants for draftsmanship to the test. Enjoying this frustrating game. These formal properties led for a new way to deal with the now. Avoiding traps of mundane depictions for an uncertain time.

Regardless of my emotions, it is always clear to me that I am depicting a feral animal. The drawings from my apartment now provide a backlog of poses, interactions, and scenarios. This activity led to a surprising level of focus for painting in the studio. Working from memory to use the feline’s body and movement in the domestic space to provoke the composition and anatomy of a painting.

My aim is for a feline response to Hockney’s Dog Days series. Mixed with the strangeness and formal strength of the Egyptian Ptolemaic feline head sculptures. Through Kazuo Shiragu’s activation of his painted surfaces. All these feats feel impossible to conquer, I like that feeling. My greatest reward while working is to laugh. If laughter is the collision of two binary forces, then that is where I want to go. That is when I know the work is moving, even momentarily, in the right direction.’

Exploring these avenues has enabled added vitality to his paintings through touch and shape guided by the feline form and personality like Break In and Monday Morning. At the made time the new motif has begun to converge to exciting results in depictions of the human body in works like Big Hit and Given to Fly.