Artereal Gallery - .Art Gallery Sydney Australia

Michael Staniak

Early Works

7 April - 16 April 2020

The following artworks are offered for sale on the secondary market. Michael Staniak is represented in Melbourne and Sydney by STATION, Australia.

Artereal Gallery is pleased to present a selection of early works by Australian artist Michael Staniak. Known for creating elusive paintings which adopt and emulate the high keyed colour palette of the internet age and screen technology, Staniak’s paintings are defined by an illusory quality where texture and surface refer as much to the history of painting as they do photography and the tools of the internet.

Artereal Gallery exhibited Staniak’s work between 2012 – 2014, presenting his work across a series of group exhibitions, solo exhibitions and art fairs. Having since catapulted onto the international contemporary art scene, Staniak is now well recognised as a painter whose interests are aligned with a group of artists who use digital strategies to create objects or make works of art inspired by the culture of the web.

Staniak’s experimental, digital media-inspired paintings explore process, materiality, and abstraction in a digital era. He describes himself as a post-Internet artist, someone whose work is informed by the act of surfing the web and engaging in its aesthetics. Generally speaking, Staniak’s work concentrates on the changing images in the digital culture and it is process-oriented. The work oscillates between a sensation of a flat, screen-mediated image and the rich texture of an analog painting.

To create his paintings, he builds up textural surfaces out of materials such as casting compound that he then sprays with acrylic paint, creating subtle gradients of texture color with minor stippling that evoke the effects of inkjet printers.

For Staniak, the life of the painting both as object and image is crucial. “I consider the finished work as a moment in my practice; something to be considered and valued as an object that will ultimately end up as another picture entering the stream of the internet,” he has said. (1)

Michael Staniak_SC IMG 721 install shot

“Michael Staniak’s hypnotic and textured surfaces act as a portal to a post-digital world, one in which we inhabit both physical and virtual spheres, and reflect on the issues this archival existence can entail. Gently undulating contours shimmer enticingly, redolent of the implied tactility of a touchscreen.” (2)

The aesthetic behind Staniak’s works is soft and delicate, but it nevertheless keeps the viewer’s eye stimulated because of the variety of subtle changes in acrylic colors and textures. Even though Michael Staniak creates his paintings by hand, they resemble flat digital prints – we have to view his works up close in order to perceive minute textures and the sense of depth. However, some of his paintings use digital processes and in this way establish the dialogue between analog acrylic work and digital modes of production. The artist’s works explore an entirely new direction in painting which is strongly influenced by current technologies, such as touch pads, smart phones, personal computers and of course the omnipresent Internet. (3)

Staniak’s paintings and sculptures are physical, tactile and hand-made but refer to and operate at the crossover of online and offline formats, of technology and plasticity. In an environment where computer generated imagery and electronic transmission has become the visual vernacular and way of seeing, he and his generation of artists are using, commenting on, imitating and finding inspiration for their pictorial worlds in digital technologies. (4)

1.Jasmine Lark. Michael Staniak. 2014. Source: Widewalls https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/michael-staniak/
2.https://theunitldn.com/artists/209-michael-staniak/
3.Jasmine Lark. Michael Staniak. 2014. Source: Widewalls https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/michael-staniak/
4.Barbara Dowse. Slow Pictures, 2014. Source: https://artereal.com.au/exhibition/slow-pictures/

Artist Biography

Michael Staniak lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He holds a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Recent exhibitions include: Natural Order, The Unit London, Mayfair, UK; SEPTEMBER 2019 / GANDER, Newfoundland Arts and Cultural Centre, Gander, Canada; JULY 2019 / MELBOURNE, STATION Australia, Melbourne; FEBRUARY 2019 / KITZBUHEL, Galerie Clemens Gunzer, Kitzbuhel, Austria; TRUE NATURE, Achenbach Hagemeier, Dusseldorf, Germany; Double Vision, Steve Turner, Los Angeles, US; Fictions #2, Eduardo Secci Contemporary, Florence, Italy; Vis-à-vis, Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, HK; Looking For U, The Unit London, Mayfair, UK; GUIDANCE, STATION Australia, Melbourne; _IMG, Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, US; Blue Times, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; and Permanent Display, Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy.