Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about what they've been up to creatively, some random facts about them, some telling ones, and just about anything else that comes up. In this instalment, we speak with the amiable Michael Mogatas. We had the pleasure of talking with Mogatas about his most recent one person show, his ambivalent relationship with images as an image maker, what his ideal breakfast is on Tuesdays, and where some of his earliest creative impulses came from.
Luther Konadu: Do you typically work from home?
Michael Mogatas: Yeah for the past year or so I have been working from 2 room apartment that I share with my girlfriend. We are both artists so some weeks if we're both working on projects it can look like a bomb went off in every room. We used to have studios at Frame and we also ran C SPACE so both of us kind of miss having so much space that we can use at anytime. We are getting a new studio in the fall though so that's going to be exciting. As a student I strictly did all my work at school, a lot of late nights, almost everyday especially in my honour year. I was primarily painting back then and on big canvases so I had no choice and I wouldn't have it any other way to be honest.
LK: How important is it for you to have a designated space for making work? Is it important for your art practice?
MM: I have a room turned into a studio in my apartment. Having a studio space will always be important if you need it for your art practice. It's also important to have space in your head to constantly think about art as well.
LK: How do you stay focused on making self directed creative work being outside of the protection of school..
MM: I constantly think about art and new ideas. My art practise is probably 75% thinking and 25% studio time.
Photo Contribution by Adam Collier
LK: What kind of feedback and response did you get from your show Draining the Battery?
MM: It’s been generally good from the few that I’ve spoken to.
LK: How's the work different or similar or continues from the Flux Gallery show you recently had?
MM: Formally the work is very similar to my show at Flux Gallery aside from the one photo print in this show. For the show at Flux most of the pictures I used were taken in the past on my phone and put into different contexts with some stock images and text. Also I was interested in painting with pictures and other mediums and techniques besides actual paint so I was using a scanner to manipulate images to look like brushstrokes and using bleach on fabrics. For Draining the Battery I didn't use any text or stock images, I took photos specifically for this show. Going forward I think I'll stick to taking all the photos that I'll be using because I'm starting to hate searching for stock images that I find interesting. Also for this show I was more interested in how hyperactivity in modern culture, mainly when looking at images. I'm used to looking at around 300 images a day on my phone/computer that I wanted to translate that sense of visual stimulation in a gallery. That's where the title of the show comes from.
LK: Was your show the inaugural for that space?
MM: Yeah. It was initially a much smaller office space and it got renovated but it turns out that my show was the first one there. I really like the space. I went in there about a month before the show to see how much work I can put in the space. It has nice windows so the gallery has sweet natural light but there isn’t much wall space so its limiting on what to show but I think it worked out.
LK: Yes, I think it a perfect space if you don’t want to overwhelm audiences with too much work all at once. The amount of pieces you had in there and the work itself correlated with the space nicely.
MM: Thank you. My last show at Flux Gallery had like about 18 artworks and this time I had only 6 so it was nice to focus on a smaller show this time.
LK: You had a variety of stretched cloth panel surfaces for your recent show, on which you had inkjet transfers. What goes into selecting those surfaces?
MM: I typically go by color and then texture. I'm working on some new things right now with some velvet which I'm excited about.
Installation View: Draining the Battery, 2016 By Photographed Reza Rezai
LK: You were working with stock photos and images from your personal phone for a previous show you had at Flux Gallery. Is that a way you’ve worked before?
MM: For that show, I was using pictures I took from my old iPhone and used them in a different contexts with pairing them with stock images. I use to do that with my paintings where I would be referring back to found images or ones I took myself. However, for the more recent show at Le Studio, I wanted to have a more concise collection of work. This led me to focus more on the photography so I took all the photos on film.
Installation View: Draining the Battery, 2016 Photographed By Reza Rezai
LK: The images you selected for Draining the Battery are very specific and there is a one that repeats through the show in different iterations. Can you talk about the choices you were making?
MM: With the lady with her back turned away from the viewer? That image was based off this optical illusion where you could see either a young lady or an old lady. One of the ideas I was interested in the show was this idea of hyperactivity with just images in general. This idea of constantly scrolling through image after image without paying any attention to what you are actually viewing. So I referenced this image as a sort of contrast because its an illusion where you actually have to look at it to really get it. I also like the idea that most optical illusions are essentially multiple images in one so I was interested to see if I could get the same stimulating feeling from 1 image the way looking at 100 images does.
Photo Contribution by Adam Collier
LK: So generally, how would you describe your relationship with ‘the image’?
MM: Well I make visual art so I guess I feel pretty good about images.
LK: But it seems to me that you kind of have a malaise to images. When you talk about constantly scrolling through image after image without full regard for them, in a way they become a banal thing.
MM: I guess you could say that. But I don’t know if I think of images as banal, any image can be interesting, its more so the act of viewing images that is becoming banal if that makes sense. The title itself Draining the Battery is a reference to that idea, the act of looking at images on your phone or other devices. I think that images like optical illusions look to draw our attention back to what is in an image. With Draining the Battery, I was also interested in the effects of being exposed to images everyday has on my art practice and the choices I make in my art. How people interact with artwork when they see thousands of images everyday outside of the gallery space was something that I was thinking about for this show specifically.
Untitled, 2016
LK: At what point did you consider correlating photography and painting in your work?
MM: For the longest time and throughout art school painting was essentially the only thing I was doing. I made representational paintings that would all reference a photograph taken of a screen from a computer because that's how I would always take my reference pictures. I really liked the loss of detail and in the process of painting I'd like to have that play with the image. So painting and photography always came hand in hand for me but it would always be a painting, it never resulted in a photograph. For the longest time I wanted to find a way that I could use my reference images as is in my work and still have some qualities of painting so that's how I ended up using inkjet transfers. In some recent work I play around with scanner beds where I move images across which created these painterly gestural marks which brought it back into elements of painting and also formally as well, stretched and framed.
Photo Contribution by Adam Collier
LK: What’s a word that’s interesting to you as of late ?
MM: I was at a spelling bee the other night and now I am repeatedly spelling the word conglomerate for absolutely no reason.
LK: What’s a medium you are interested in trying out or making work through that you haven’t already done so?
MM: It would probably have to be screen-printing.
LK: What’s your ideal breakfast?
MM: I don’t know. It depends on what day.
LK: What about Tuesday?
MM: I always like eggs so maybe that.
LK: How do you like your eggs?
MM: I get over-medium when at a restaurant and scrambled at home.
LK: Do you like veggies your eggs?
MM: Unless I make an omelet, I keep it separate. I also recently bought a box of Frosted Flakes after not having them for years and they're great. Wait let me repeat that, "They're grrrreeaaaat"
LK: A dish you would rather stare at than eat?
MM: A bowl of fruit.
LK: What’s your earliest memory of feeling embarrassed?
MM: I like to think I’m pretty good at avoiding embarrassing moments although, I might have said something through this interview that might be embarrassing.
LK: Who in your family would you consider creative apart from yourself?
MM: My dad is pretty creative at finding ways to make fun of me and my sister.
LK: What’s an early memory of doing anything you can look back now as being creative?
MM: I can remember being asked to draw Street Fighter characters when I was in kindergarten.
LK: Who’s your favorite Michael?
MM: Definitely Michael Jordan. I heard he’s a bit of an asshole but whatever he's the G.O.A.T.
