Michael Wetzel
Sunny Today
On View: June 3rd - July 8th, 2011
Opening Reception: June 3rd, 6-8 PM
LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present Sunny Today, an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Wetzel
On the occasion of this exhibit, Joseph R. Wolin has provided an accompanying text entitled “Country Clubbing,” excerpted below as introduction for Sunny Today.
Yacht club, horse club, hunting club, night club—the names conjure a chummy world of wealth and privilege, luxury and sophistication. It is a world evoked by Michael Wetzel’s new paintings and works on paper, which quite literally picture moveable feasts, a stock cast of objects that reenact a succession of gustatory still lifes. Wetzel depicts tables groaning with bounty: plattered lobsters, fleshy shrimp cocktails, crustless sandwich triangles, hams glazed with cherry-studded pineapple slices, and, most frequently, pyramidal towers of stacked champagne glasses, filled to overflowing. The settings of these still lifes suggest the variety of swank locales invoked by their titles, each individuated by carefully coordinated accessories and ambience. The black décor of Night Club, for example, accented with colored stripes, patterned vines, and rococo Ccurves, intimates a smoky glamour. The wan foliage of the wall treatment in Bamboo Club perfumes the scene with the faintest whiff of the exotic Orient. And the spiky fronds that jut in from the left-hand side of The Palms unmistakably indicate the sort of hotel ballroom that features the potted plants and hosts elaborate affairs (one can almost hear the staidly jazzy strains of the orchestra playing in the background).
- Joseph R. Wolin, 2011
Michael Wetzel lives and works in New York, NY. He received a BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase in Purchase, NY (1989). In 2009, John Connelly Presents of New York, NY hosted their third solo exhibition of Wetzel’s paintings in the exhibition Supper Club. Wetzel has also shown recently with several other New York galleries, including the Foley Gallery, Eleven Rivington, and Artists Space.