Michael Venezia | MVNY #862, 1971 | max goelitz

1971

Medium

Carbon black and metalized bronze powders on paper

Dimensions

110 × 74 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-156300

Michael Venezia's spray paintings on paper, created in the early 1970s, are among the artist's rare works on paper and have a more experimental character than his canvases. Venezia revolutionized the application of paint with his spray paintings by mixing acrylic emulsion with metal pigments and applying them to the canvas using an industrial spray gun. Beyond their visual quality, the works on paper represent an investigation of the spray process, the angle of impact, the duration of spraying and the formation of form, in order to analyze the irrationality and mutability of this application of paint. In the irregular structures Venezia explores the theme of repetition and proportionality of the spray mark to each other. At the center of these experiments is the imitation, or instinctive reproduction, of an always identical spray technique on the same sheet. In “MVNY #862” (1971) Venezia applies carbon powder and metallized bronze powder to paper along pencil marks using a spray gun. Despite the symmetrical and grid-like arrangement in the 3 x 4 grid, the respective spray strokes differ from each other, as the control and exact repetition of spray duration and distance to the paper cannot be reproduced exactly.