ALWAYS, NEVER
ALWAYS, NEVER
In efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19, nonessential events and gatherings are cancelled until further notice. “ALWAYS, NEVER” will be rescheduled at a later date.
“ALWAYS, NEVER” is an installation of images, animations and objects all culled from Michael Salter’s book by the same title, to be released at the exhibition in hyper-limited editions. The image-heavy book roughly catalogs Salter’s obsession and response to global contemporary visual culture. Within the installation will be digitally-born printed images, a large site-specific mural, an animated automatic logo-generator, a life-sized long-track polystyrene snowmobile, other flat works, live tattoos by Joshua Hood and a taco truck from Tacos El Machin.
“’ALWAYS, NEVER’ comes from two things, my obsession with paradoxes, and this… once I was in the very densely populated city of Wuhan, China walking through a busy university campus when I looked up and saw a person wearing a t-shirt that had one word on it, “Always”. Seconds later, after crossing the street, another person walked right by me wearing a t-shirt and the only thing it had on it was the word “Never”.
We give away our data as we shop for distractions, extending the long, slow, painful death of capitalism as it gasps for life drowning in microplastic filled oceans sinking down to fracked crevices oozing with oil, war and death. The drought of compassion expects no rain.
Fascists drive the planet into a trajectory of greed and murder. I struggle to squeeze the twisted humor from the by-products of a system bent on coddling the few and starving the most, yet this is my work – to find the pleasure in the pain, a breath of hope despite a stranglehold of hopelessness, to distill the liquid chaos and find in the bottom of the vessel, human connection and empathy, to remain open and curious despite the media storm of opinions and simulations…to read the label but eat it anyways.” – Michael Salter, 2020
Michael A. Salter is a Professor of Art at the University of Oregon, Department of Art, School of Art + Design, College of Design, Art & Technology Program. Salter’s work has been shown nationally and internationally in Beijing, Wuhan, Brussels, New York, L.A., Portland, London, Amsterdam, Miami, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Seattle, Atlanta and Chicago. His work has been featured in Art In America, Best Art NY 2009, Dot Dot Dash, Pictoplasma2, Grab Magazine, Arkitip Magazine, Repellent Magazine, and LoDown Magazine. He has exhibited solo installations at The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem, NC, at the Charles de Jonghe gallery, Brussels, Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Jeff Bailey Gallery, NYC, The University of Texas, Arlington, and Black Market Gallery in Los Angeles, California, The University of Colorado, UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Art Colorado Springs and the New Britain Museum of America Art in CT.