Michael Craig Tracy: Unité
Invernadero presents Michael Craig Tracy: Unité. On view from July 1 through August 1, this is the gallery’s inaugural show. Tracy’s paintings were made during the Spring of 2020 in a 500 square foot apartment in Brooklyn, NY in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak.
In Division I, Chapter IV of Being and Time, Heidegger asks the question who is it that Being-there is in its everydayness? His answer is Das Man, the anonymous other amongst whom I also belong. The anonymous other living in my studio has sworn fealty to orthodoxies in painting beyond his control. The part of me that points to myself when it says I somehow continues to uphold the idea that painting decisions are choices. Transcendence is the straddling of two irresolvable differences. I am most attracted to art that fails to live up to its historical moment. The first line of Francis Alys’ wall painting 1943 is as follows; I think of Morandi painting on a hill surrounded by fascism.
In the 1920s Le Corbusier began working on plans for a modernist way of living, Unité d’habitation. Architecture is always an instance in which the philosophical-ideological comes into material contact with the Real. In the case of Modern architecture, way of life is streamlined and reconfigured in relation to the square. Built into this idea is the vision of a complete social structure in which the circle of form and function remains unbroken. Further built into that idea are a set of assumptions involving a static view of socio-economic status, urbanity, and family structure.
Modernism proposed a deliberate break from the past and attempted to walk into an imaginary utopian future. The first problem faced by early humans when they left behind a life of hunting and gathering in favor of permanent dwellings was the question of how to keep waste and disease away from their food and living areas. In March of this year New York City became the global hotspot for the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, and a stay at home order was issued. Millions of people retreated into their apartments. Way of life was disrupted and retrofitted to accommodate a life lived completely indoors. We became afraid of the air our neighbor breathed, and the urban cosmology was reduced to the most basic anti modern 1:1 unit-- the interior of the family home versus everybody else.
These paintings are a meditation on the conditions of this interiority. The failure of Painting lies in its perpetual inability, despite repeated attempts, to heroically deal with the gravity of its historical moment. It is forced instead to ask who is it that I am in my everydayness? Interior space becomes loaded with an anxious concern for the exterior, its edges acting as a prophylactic against the unknown outside. The coronavirus reintroduced a question about the relationship between epistemology and social order. What can I know? What must I do? Nestled between these two questions is an ethical question at the heart of aesthetics; What should I hope for? These paintings ask for an art within the material reality of the everyday.
Michael Craig Tracy (b.1986, Des Moines, Iowa) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in painting from the University of Iowa, and is currently an MFA candidate at Hunter College (Spring 2021). Recent exhibitions include Elements of Existence at Public Swim (New York, NY) and The Magic Hour (Brooklyn, NY).
Invernadero presents Michael Craig Tracy: Unité. On view from July 1 through August 1, this is the gallery’s inaugural show. Tracy’s paintings were made during the Spring of 2020 in a 500 square foot apartment in Brooklyn, NY in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak.
In Division I, Chapter IV of Being and Time, Heidegger asks the question who is it that Being-there is in its everydayness? His answer is Das Man, the anonymous other amongst whom I also belong. The anonymous other living in my studio has sworn fealty to orthodoxies in painting beyond his control. The part of me that points to myself when it says I somehow continues to uphold the idea that painting decisions are choices. Transcendence is the straddling of two irresolvable differences. I am most attracted to art that fails to live up to its historical moment. The first line of Francis Alys’ wall painting 1943 is as follows; I think of Morandi painting on a hill surrounded by fascism.
In the 1920s Le Corbusier began working on plans for a modernist way of living, Unité d’habitation. Architecture is always an instance in which the philosophical-ideological comes into material contact with the Real. In the case of Modern architecture, way of life is streamlined and reconfigured in relation to the square. Built into this idea is the vision of a complete social structure in which the circle of form and function remains unbroken. Further built into that idea are a set of assumptions involving a static view of socio-economic status, urbanity, and family structure.
Modernism proposed a deliberate break from the past and attempted to walk into an imaginary utopian future. The first problem faced by early humans when they left behind a life of hunting and gathering in favor of permanent dwellings was the question of how to keep waste and disease away from their food and living areas. In March of this year New York City became the global hotspot for the deadly Covid-19 pandemic, and a stay at home order was issued. Millions of people retreated into their apartments. Way of life was disrupted and retrofitted to accommodate a life lived completely indoors. We became afraid of the air our neighbor breathed, and the urban cosmology was reduced to the most basic anti modern 1:1 unit-- the interior of the family home versus everybody else.
These paintings are a meditation on the conditions of this interiority. The failure of Painting lies in its perpetual inability, despite repeated attempts, to heroically deal with the gravity of its historical moment. It is forced instead to ask who is it that I am in my everydayness? Interior space becomes loaded with an anxious concern for the exterior, its edges acting as a prophylactic against the unknown outside. The coronavirus reintroduced a question about the relationship between epistemology and social order. What can I know? What must I do? Nestled between these two questions is an ethical question at the heart of aesthetics; What should I hope for? These paintings ask for an art within the material reality of the everyday.
Michael Craig Tracy (b.1986, Des Moines, Iowa) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA in painting from the University of Iowa, and is currently an MFA candidate at Hunter College (Spring 2021). Recent exhibitions include Elements of Existence at Public Swim (New York, NY) and The Magic Hour (Brooklyn, NY).
Michael Craig Tracy, May 2020 #2, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
Michael Craig Tracy, April 2020 #2, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
Michael Craig Tracy, May 2020 #1, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
Michael Craig Tracy, April 2020 #3, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
Michael Craig Tracy, June 2020 #2, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
