"Monuments Open Edition Print" by Michelle Silver

19"h by 13"w paper with a 24"h by 18"w white mat.

From Silver's solo show "Between Facing Mirrors" at Super Secret Projects.

Between Facing Mirrors examines physical and metaphysical space through the lens of motherhood. Resurfacing from the depths of postpartum depression for the second time, Michelle Silver discovers everything about her is illuminated, as if she stands between facing mirrors, seeing multiplicities of herself reflected in her children and exposed to the world around her. As her identity is reconstructed, contradictory elements compete for dominance: mother, artist, duty, desire. An echo of a past life reverberates against the cries of her children. Time stretches forward and bends around her, each moment as tedious as it is tender and fleeting.

Silver uses studio meditation to create the space she lacks both in bodily autonomy and mental capacity. She creates imagined worlds to bear this weight: mysterious landscapes that expand and contract as she skews depth, flattens planes, and layers moments in time. Using only her memory as reference, Silver applies the paint in broad relational stream-of-conscious strokes, where each move is determined by the one before. Heavy layers of paint are added, while other areas are scraped away revealing what’s underneath, a process that documents her inner dialogue. 

Artist Bio:
Michelle Silver grew up on the edge of the Catskill mountains in New York and spent her early adulthood in a vibrant art community in Boston, where she graduated magna cum laude from Boston University in 2009. She then moved to Brooklyn, where she surrounded herself with inspiration, had her first solo exhibition, joined a band, and developed her voice in graphic design. Desiring a peaceful place to create and raise her family, she moved to a woodsy home on the side of a mountain in the lower Hudson Valley, NY in 2019. Silver is currently the Co-Founder and Gallery Director of a combined art gallery and tattoo studio in Beacon, NY called Distortion Society, in addition to a freelance branding and web designer and studio artist.