Michael Watson

Pyre XII, stainless steel pieces and charred birch plywood created with fire

2017

Michael Watson is a New York based, Filipino American multidisciplinary artist. His process-based sculptures, installations, and performance art embraces destructive and regenerative processes. He relies on experimental modes of production such as improvisation, destabilization and chance. He engages with found objects and natural materials such as plywood, rice and fire to produce his works. Watson explores the interstices of being, substance and imperceptibility through the use of rice and other materials as a substitute for the human body. Watson's individual and collaborative work has been exhibited throughout the US including the Greenville Museum of Art (2021 - present), stART Space Gallery, Manchester Center, VT (2018 -2019), Gowanus Dredgers, Brooklyn, NY (2018), LaBodega Gallery, NY (2018), Hunterdon Art Museum, NJ (2017), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, NY (2015,16), Brooklyn Museum (2014-15), Leila Heller Gallery, NYC (2014), SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA (2014), Strange Loop Gallery, NYC (2014), Ideas City Festival via AiOP affiliated with The New Museum (2013), The Kitchen, NYC (2013), Governor’s Island Art Fair, NYC (2012/13), and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN (2006). His residency experience includes Arts, Letters and Numbers, Averill Park NY (2017), AIR Program 4heads Organization, NYC (2013) and the New York Studio Program, NYC (2006). His work can be found in several publications including Caddisfly Project Volume 4 (Forthcoming), The Seeds of Creation: Art and Spirituality, by Cosmina Ene (2021), Gwan Anthology: Volume Two, Forward Comix (2020), and The Seeds of Creation: Artists During the 2020 Pandemic, by Cosmina Ene (2020). Currently, he is participating in the ChaShaMa Space to Create studio program in New York City. Watson received an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (2013) and a BFA in Painting from the Art Academy of Cincinnati (2006).