Themes surrounding surfaces, ornamentation and decoration abound throughout the show...what role do these all play in the works?Changing the appearance of something is an act I seem to be doing on a more regular basis; swapping surfaces in Sketchup, grading in Photoshop or final cut, designing a pair of Nike’s online, choosing a filter in Instagram, etc and I wanted to explore this splitting of surface, substrate, presentation, representation and content. In the photographs there is an absence of use in the ‘buildings’, there are no doors, windows, drains, wires etc, and this leaves the surfaces and architectural features to become the thing itself; it’s like extreme postmodern architecture. This relates in a way to a contemporary approach to photography. With the ability to change the grade, exposure or focus with one click content creation, an after-process mostly guides the look of the image; this is a point of interest to me and I wanted to pitch it alongside similar concerns with the structure of making the images themselves.

What is the role of collaboration in this show? Why did you want to open up your process in this way?
Because I work so much on the computer I was thinking about sculpture in a similar way to the way I work with apps, quickly flipping through different renderings of a surface of a structure etc. Though I thought it would be interesting to kind of zoom out one step and instead of applying a surface to a substrate or structure, that I apply a readymade productive system from within the social sphere instead. To use a system as a material which comes with all sorts of unseen factors such as time, uncertainty, other people etc. It’s like saying that the sculpture is made of, wood, fabric, interior design and paint.

So in applying cake making and fashion design to the forms, the results come with all their trappings, unpredictability and unforeseen idiosyncrasies. When looking at the work the viewer is aware of the initial commitment of working with an external factor, and the understanding of the unpredictability in this becomes part of the reading of the work. Do you see the photographs as sculptures as much as they are images? How do they relate to the actual sculptures?
I see the images as photography invested in similar concerns to sculpture but different as it is precisely not actual and visa versa. This points to the hermetic nature of photography and the specific vernacular of the digital and always refers back to itself.

Everything comes through a computer program, Photoshop/Sketchup...is this important or is it just a function of the studio practice?Well I think it is important to me because it’s a function of the studio practice; it’s pervasive. These shifts in my approach to making changes the ideas I have because, amongst other things, i play with them in a different way and think about them in a different way. I think that these new technological tools make small fundamental changes that end up having a great and sprawling effect both on the things we produce and the way understand them. I think this is interesting and critically unavoidable for any artist using technology, addressed directly or by proxy.

Oliver Michaels, lives and works New York, b.1972. Recent exhibitions include Film Screenings, Hammer Museum, LA (2013), ‘A Journey Between Two Fixed Points’, Cole, London (2011) ‘Rude Britania: British Comic Art’ – Tate Britain (2010), London, ‘The Alienation of Objects: Toby Ziegler’, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2010), ‘Superficial’, Cleopatra’s, New York, 2010.

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