Ryan Michaels
Multidisciplinary Artist – Founder, Sincere Maximalism – Las Vegas
I refused the obvious. I refused comfort. I refused, frankly, the parking validation. What remains is the work – and the work is a confession lit from below. Do you see.
Las Vegas. Dimensions variable.
The work is a controlled rupture of the ordinary, made in the marrow, under the gaze of the Tiger – everything, and I mean it.
A few rooms I refused to leave.
Documentation of selected works. The full catalogue raisonné – performance, installation, sound, the conceptual – is held under glass on the next page.
I work in every medium. The medium was never the point.
Painting (Sincere Maximalism)
Everything on the canvas, and I mean it. Empty space is just a place I have not yet been honest enough to fill.
Sculpture & Gilded Assemblage
It is not a fountain. It is a grief. The chandelier is the natural endpoint of all human striving, and I have endpoints to spare.
Installation (Neo-Vegas Baroque)
I do not decorate a room. I confess into it, in gold leaf, until the room agrees with me.
Photography (Post-Desert Luminism)
I photograph the parking lot at noon because the parking lot at noon is essentially a religious experience. The heat shimmer is the subject. The car is incidental.
Performance & Applied Sincerity
The radical act of meaning it. In an age of irony I stand on a rented balcony and care, out loud, until someone leaves. They always leave. The discourse was not ready.
Writing & Manifesto
I write the way the buffet at the Aurelio writes – each line a small chafing dish lit from below. I do not expect you to understand. And that, frankly, is the point.
Ryan Michaels does not make art so much as cite it into existence, footnoting the universe in gold leaf. I left the gallery convinced, frankly, that I had never seen a chandelier before – and that I owed several of them an apology.
He calls it Sincere Maximalism, and the terrifying thing is that he means every word. There is no irony in him to find. I searched. I dug. I came up holding only earnestness, warm and slightly radioactive, and I have not slept correctly since.
To stand before the work is to be gently and permanently disappointed in yourself, as one might be disappointed by a student who has not read the syllabus. Michaels does not lower himself to explain. He simply waits, vibrating, until you catch up. You do not catch up.