Celebrated Designer Michael Angel’s Breakthrough Fabric Paintings Attract Collectors and Celebs in NYC
On Thursday evening, Michael Angel’s second solo art exhibition, Maps and Stacks, opened in New York. Set in a two-story Tribeca gallery, the large scale mixed media works garnered praise from new and old collectors, art critics, as well as friends and design-world colleagues, including Susan Sarandon, Christy Turlington, Ladyfag, and David Alexander Flinn.
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Benny Or, and Natasha Roberts attend Artist Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Stacey Jordan Cook and Brian Atwood attend Artist Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Jason Wu, Susan Sarandon and Artist Michael Angel at Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
Angel’s museum-exhibited, hand drawn digital prints on fabrics, including expertly blended silks and wools he used as a designer, remain the medium of choice. Though now, his 10+ year archive of textiles serve as the top coat in layered abstract expressionist paintings on canvas, created through gestural movements in a style all his own.
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Artist Michael Angel and Liya Kebede at Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Luigi and Iango and Sky the dog attend Artist Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: Artist Michael Angel at Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Michael Angel and Benny Or attend Artist Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Christy Turlington Burns and Artist Michael Angel at Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
Examining empathy, the universal emotive language, Angel’s mixed media works fold and crease, captured colors and cloth physically merging into piles of materialized movement, which distantly call to mind Sam Gilliam’s draped paintings and Katharina Grosse’s painted fabrics. For the innovative textile artist, material is also the subject, which summons a reevaluation of materiality and what it means “to paint.”
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: Atmosphere at Artist Michael Angel “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: Atmosphere at Artist Michael Angel “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: (L-R) Artist Michael Angel and Patricia Black attend Michael Angel’s “Maps and Stacks” Presented by Gobbi Fine Art on October 10, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Debra L Rothenberg/Getty Images for Gobbi Fine Art )
“My love of painting and art was inspired by the Great Masters’ treatment of cloth. This is an expansion upon the language of my work,” Angel says, “prompting the viewer to explore a process of merging, even in our most fragile and naive states [while] also showcasing both difference and harmony.”