Michael Tole

The Dissidents: Discourse on the Golden Mean

2022

The Concert appropriates and marries two disparate art historical references, Titian’s, The Flaying of Marsyas, and Barbara Kruger’s, You Construct Intricate Rituals Which Allow You to Touch the Skin of Other Men. This piece seeks to probe the source and nature of our discomfort with the nude male body. In our culture, the male body is rarely displayed as an object of beauty. When it is, it is automatically described as “homo-erotic,” a term that implies that it appeals only to a niche audience, and denies its relevance or potential appeal to society as a whole. To avoid our discomfort, male nudity...

After: The Young Beggar by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (c. 1645-50) and Approaching Thunder Storm by Martin Johnson Heade (1859) The main character of this painting finds himself mired in a pond as a sizeable storm approaches, and yet – instead of standing up and removing himself from the trouble – he chooses to focus on the discomfort of his wet clothing. This child, attending to a minor nuisance rather than enacting a permanent solution, stands in as an icon of our current sociopolitical leadership – leadership which has defined our modern reality by its preference for constantly kicking the can on major issues (climate change, income inequality, various forms of discrimination, and so much more) as the rest of us are left to watch from the shore. ADAM MYSOCK was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1983 - the son of an elementary school English teacher and a lab technician who specialized in the manufacturing of pigments. On account of a steady stream of folk tales from his mother and his father’s vividly dyed work clothes, he developed an interest in narrative and representative painting from an early age. Mysock earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Art History in 2004 from Tulane University and an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2007. After his studies, Mysock taught at the university level for nearly a decade, including as a Professor of Practice at Tulane University. In 2016, he and his family moved back to Cincinnati, where he currently serves as coordinator for Manifest Drawing Center. Mysock’s work has been exhibited throughout the country and is in private collections across the US, including the 21c Museum, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Ruslan Yusupov, Thomas Coleman and Michael...

Acrylic on canvas Carlos Gamez de Francisco is an American artitst with Cuban origins born in 1987 who lives and works in Fort Myers, FL, and Louisville, KY. He has received numerou...

Disconnect John Hardy, American (1923–2014) Date: 1998 Oil on Wood, signed Size: 24 x 18 in. (60.96 x 45.72 cm)