Michaël a. Salter

Artist description

Every city and town has a street, never downtown, lined with strip malls, fast food, and discount stores. Here, I am inspired. It is the most prolific testimony of our current culture. As an obsessive observer, I am fascinated, repelled, and hypnotized by the deluge of images that our visual culture bombards us with every day. I challenge this onslaught and examine it. I want to untangle the cacophony of visual noise and rethink meaning, pattern, perception, and narrative. Amidst this infinitely chaotic flow of information, I have a gnawing desire, a yearning for truth and beauty.

Images, moments, situations, spaces, and environments can be so coldly anonymous and at the same time so laden with meaning. The closer I look, the stranger it all becomes. Nothing is as it seems. In a world where volumes of numbing stimuli assault my consciousness and increase my anxiety, I seek peace and clarity. My work is an attempt to slow down, sort, and focus the information. What seems simple eludes me so quickly and leaves such a thick cloud of dust that I have to stop and wipe my eyes.