Michael Knigin

Silkscreen Surrealist Pop Art Print "Pas De Deux"

2006

HARRY BOWERS T E N P H O T O G R A P H S I DON'T LOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHS I INVENT THEM I recall my first meeting with Harry Bowers in California a few years ago. As he produc...

Michael Jay Knigin (American, 1942 – 2011) Untitled (abstract) Mixed media painting on paper, includes acrylic, watercolor and gouache Estate stamp on the ...

HARRY BOWERS T E N P H O T O G R A P H S I DON'T LOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHS I INVENT THEM I recall my first meeting with Harry Bowers in California a few years ago. As he produced his large-scale prints, I was at first flabbergasted, not only by their size, but by their seamless perfection. Technique appeared to be everything but then technique as technique simply vanished. After the first moment, tech­nique was no longer an issue, but rather a passageway to the imagery. Suffice it to say about Harry Bowers' working style that he is an obsessive man. Trained as an engineer, he has turned that discipline to art. His lenses, equipment and darkroom, much of it exactingly manu­factured by himself to answer certain needs, serve the desire of the artist to take photographic tech­nique to its ultimate perfection in invisibility and transparency. I respect obsession in art, and particularly in photography, because obsession in photography passes beyond the easy, middle ground of image making to a more demanding, more difficult, yet more rewarding end. Bowers' obsession is to eliminate "photography as technique." No grain, no decisive moments, no journalism, or, seemingly, direct auto­biographical endeavors appear in his work. Bowers is an artist of synthesis who controls his environment if only in the studio exactly to his liking. The images he creates are formal structures, saucy stories on occasion, which may offer hints of a darker, more frightening sexuality, but what you see is the end product of an experiment in which nothing save the original insight perhaps is left to chance. We seem fascinated with the idea of replication of reality in art. Popular painting frequently reproduces a scene "with the accuracy of a photograph," and photographs may "make you feel as though you were right there." The very invisibility of the photographic medium is important to Bowers, in that it allows him to maneuver his subject matter without concern for rendering it in an obvious art medium which would interfere with the nature of the materials he uses. The formal subtleties of Bowers' recent work are as delicious and ambiguous in their interrelationships as the best Cubist collages, yet while those col­lages always suggest their parts through edge and texture, these photographs present a structure through a surface purity. Bowers' earlier works, for example, the Skirts I Have Known series, were formed of bits of clothing belong­ing to Bowers and his wife or found at local thrift shops. These works fused an elegance of pattern and texture, reminiscent of Miriam Shapiro...

Biography: Sandro Chia was born in Florence in 1946. He has studied at the Istituto d’Arte and then at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence where he graduated in 1969. After gradu...

Manuel Victorio (Spain, 1958) 'Jardín azul', 1997 silkscreen on canvas 21.3 x 28.8 in. (54 x 73 cm.) Edition of 75 ID: VIC1221-001-075 Unframed Hand-signed by author

Michael Knigin, American (1942 - 2011) - World Order, Year: 2002, Medium: Chromogenic Print on Canvas mounted to board, signed and dated lower left and signed, titled, numbered and ...

Margó Venegas (Spain) 'Baile' silkscreen on paper 27.6 x 19.7 in. (70 x 50 cm.) Edition of 25 ID: VEN1174-001-025 Unframed Hand-signed by author

Michael Knigin, American (1942 - 2011) - Their in Tune, Year: 2002, Medium: Chromogenic Print on Canvas mounted to board, signed and dated lower left and signed, titled, numbered an...