Michael Lindeman: Screws It Up Again

ABOVE: Michael Lindeman Judge Lives Here, 2021 ‘Art Review Power 100’ profiles, clear vinyl 180 x 102 x 12 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

By Martha Farquhar

Michael Lindeman does wry institutional critique like no other. Via absurdist dialogues struck up with the viewer about the hierarchies of financial and cultural value, within the artworld and beyond, Lindeman calls into question the role of the artist and artwork, playfully inverting structures of power all the while.

In his latest exhibition, the artist’s text-based painting and installation works extend well beyond the confines of the gallery, communicating through and in print media to expand the impact and implication of all parties to the facts and fictions of perhaps all creative industries today.

Michael Lindeman Art gallery punch-up (August 1, 1993), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 21 x 126 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman SHY GENIUS KEPT PAINTINGS HIDDEN (February 14, 1965), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 99 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman Controversial contemporary practices (September 18, 1992), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 51 x 85 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman INVEST EXCESS PROFITS IN QUALITY ART (June 4, 1978), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 21 x 101 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Scandinavian philosopher and celebrity restaurateur, Erik Walter Johansen, once described Michael Lindeman’s art practice as “a fizzing colostomy bag of myriad ideas and simmering provocations intermittently shooting forth emergency flares to illuminate a visual culture that is fast going blind”.

What Johansen cryptically refers to in the latter part of this statement is the seeming inability of contemporary artists, curators, museum directors, art critics and viewers (as we are all guilty) to see, compute, act upon and/or comment about what is directly in front of us. Put a slightly different way, he is describing a collective loss of vision and self-induced apathy finely harnessed as a strategy to cruise through life without upsetting anyone or turning oneself into a target. In essence, it’s the absolute opposite of what art for the past century and a half has set out to achieve.

Michael Lindeman’s work unapologetically forces us to address the elephant(s) in the room and urges us, with some urgency, to question whether the contemporary elephant has lost weight, or whether we are simply losing the ability to see it? There’s no hiding for the proverbial anorexic elephant in Lindeman’s latest set of sculptures produced for his upcoming exhibition, Art Habits, at Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney. The sculptural forms have been made using transparent vinyl, allowing the content (both literal and conceptual) of each sculpture to be closely inspected. In a previous related work, Thanks (2018), the artist constructed the word THANKS in giant threedimensional clear vinyl letters which he then stuffed with rejection letters accumulated over the course of his art career. Cathartic counter-punches are part of Lindeman’s arsenal, as are carefully considered ego-popping pot shots.

For the new series of sculptures, Lindeman adopts esoteric street symbols developed by hobos on the American railroad scene during the post-Civil War era. The title of each work relates directly to the meaning of the chosen secret symbol. Judge Lives Here 2021, is a looping snake-like form; Easy Access or Resistance 2021, is more like an arrowhead; whilst Crime Committed 2021, looks like a corrupted hashtag symbol. The sculptures are filled with a carefully curated selection of crumpled magazine pages and printed matter. The meaning of each work starts to slowly unravel as information is gleaned from the screwed up paper, visible through the transparent vinyl skin. It’s hard not to feel like you are seeing something to which you shouldn’t be party.

“Cathartic counter-punches are part of Lindeman’s arsenal.”

Michael LindemanNew Types of Art (Self-Promotional Painting), 2021Acrylic on canvas150 x 100 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny 41

“A fizzing colostomy bag of myriad ideas and simmering provocations intermittently shooting forth emergency flares to illuminate a visual culture that is fast going blind.”

Lindeman has been busy painting too, with two new groups of paintings titled New Types of Art and Art Headlines. Both suites can broadly be described as art about art. The former adopting a fauve colour palette and art studio tools and paraphernalia to offer up an alternative taxonomic interpretation of current art practices and trends; the latter reappropriates newspaper headlines to create a kind of ‘cut-and-paint’ abbreviated and absurd art history. Also planned for the Sydney exhibition is Cheese 2021, a 4.6m long text painting in six parts in a customised Swiss-cheese cartoon font surrounded by an orbit of charged ‘readymade’ rat traps. When Cheese was previously installed earlier this year at The Guggenheim, New York, as part of the exhibition Why Is Broccoli Always Orange in Film Noir Movies?, alongside artists including Mel Bochner, Sarah Lucas and Maurizio Cattelan, one of the rat traps crushed the nose of an inquisitive labrador guide dog, much to the distress of museum staff and the dog’s owner. This resulted in the temporary closure of the museum and the artwork eventually being pulled from the exhibition on the grounds of animal cruelty and danger to the public.

Undeterred by this experience, to coincide with the Sydney exhibition opening, Lindeman has commissioned an aerial flyover by a Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18A Hornet fighter jet, fully laden with laser-guided bombs and air-to-surface missiles. Titled The Battle of Waterloo 2021, the work turns the gallery into a giant rat trap of sorts. As the fighter jet roars overhead, less than 20 metres from the gallery roof, exhibition visitors will be hoping this is just a dummy run.

Exhibition: June 10 - July 3, 2021

Michael Lindeman New Types of Art (Cerebral Ceramics), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 100 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman New Types of Art (Sensible Abstraction), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 100 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman New Types of Art (Jesus Vibes), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 100 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman New Types of Art (Speculative Chunks), 2021 Acrylic on canvas 150 x 100 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny

Michael Lindeman Crime Committed (detail), 2021 Colour prints of Australian impasto paintings, clear vinyl 130 x 175 x 12 cm Photo credit: Mark Pokorny