BACKSLASH

Michael Zelehoski takes found three-dimensional objects like pallets or police barricades and restructures them into two-dimensional space. The resulting works are not mirrors of the objects, but instead examine and challenge the selective process of human perception in its most abstract and creative tendencies. To create these assemblages, the artist has cut and joined the found materials sometimes hundreds of times, inlaying them within planes of black or white that traverse positive and negative space. The compositional fragments are tied together literally and conceptually, which disrupts traditional spatial delineations by transforming the actual into the graphic and vice versa. Michael Zelehoski received his Associates of Art degree from Bard College at Simon’s Rock and a BA from the Universidad Finis Terrae, in Santiago, Chile. Michael Zelehoski’s return to the United States after six years in South America coincided with the literal collapse of his early sculptural work into the two-dimensional picture plane. He has since exhibited on four continents. He has received a variety of awards for his work, including from the Staten Island Museum and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His monumental work, Open House, has been added to the permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou - National Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 2015.