SANDLER HUDSON GALLERY IGNACIO MICHAUD BIO Ignacio Michaud (Chilean, born 1979) is a contemporary painter. In 2006, he received his BFA from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions in San Francisco, Nashville, Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Atlanta among other cities. Currently, he lives and works in Atlanta, GA. “My current work began in 2006 when impulse-driven sketches became my way to express my experiences in a new country. With the everyday demands of a day job, I was suddenly exposed to the lives of hundreds of immigrants with origins in Africa, Asia, Europe, East Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America. For the past fifteen years, I have kept hundreds of sketches on sticky notes and used them as the starting point for my paintings. This is a project built on the premise that our experiences can be reduced to bits of information and that a method that relies on quick and spontaneous decisions, when contained, can bring forth greater narrative precision. The formal challenge is to present an original compositional structure that can deliver both the accidents and the certainties of painting; in short, the challenge is to explore the possibilities of what painting can be. I believe in the now, the elasticity of time and auguries. I believe that the realization of an image is the realization of visual truth. I use the surrealist method of automatic drawing and, since 2006, have collected hundreds of these sketches to create an index conjuring this matter. In the studio, I manipulate the scale of these drawings to create my paintings. I have chosen this medium to explore and translate a vibrational response to the perception of the present moment. In my studio, I systemically organize these drawings within the square and rectangle of my canvas, aiming for narratives of higher and deeper precision and original compositional structures that can sustain the dramatic tension between drawing and painting. When lines and colors are placed in a way that enables energy to move fluently, balance is found; balance is inherently dynamic, it is the constant adjustment of line and color. I find myself in the studio wishing to walk through these possibilities as on a high-wire, perfectly at ease.”
ARTIST STATEMENT My current work began in 2006 when impulse driven sketches became my way to express my experiences in a new country. With the everyday demands of a day job, I was suddenly exposed to the lives of hundreds of immigrants with origins in Africa, Asia, Europe, East Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Latin America. For the past fifteen years, I have kept hundreds of sketches on sticky notes and used them as the starting point for my paintings. This is a project built on the premise that our experiences can be reduced to bits of information and that a method that relies on quick and spontaneous decisions, when contained, can bring forth greater narrative precision. The