Michael St-Germain

I employ abstraction to create the illusion of reality. My engagement with materials is mediated by Pareidolia: “a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant.”* My works embody arbitrary rules, accumulation of materiel and musculoskeletal bias.

I value relative experience and unintended aesthetic consequences. I see artistic potential in literary, sensory and aesthetic misinterpretation. My role, as an artist, is to create and promote an opt-in supplemental reality. This real and imagined “aesthetic hybrid “is affected (and actualized) by each viewers’ emotional climate, susceptibility to illusion and ability to exist in the present moment.

*Wikipedia

Painting Department
Massachusetts College of Art
Boston, MA, BFA, 1994

Education

1994 BFA, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2016 Multiform, Newton Free Public Library, Newton, MA

2014 Cool and Distant, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

2010 Additive Knowledge, Cumulative Presence, Gallery at Spencer Lofts, Chelsea, MA

2009 Corpus Callosum, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

1989 Tandem Solo: Harless, St.Germain, Coles, Field Gallery, West Tisbury, MA

Selected Group Exhibitions

2017 Black and White, The Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT

2016 Something Out of Nothing II, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

Osten Biennial of Drawing, Gallery Osten, Skopje, Fyrom

Boston Biennial IV, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

2015 Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Exhibition, Mayor’s Gallery, Boston, MA

Something Out of Nothing, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, Massachusetts

2013 Unhinged, Pierogi, Brooklyn, New York

With A Little Help From Our Friends, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

The Song Remains the Same, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

2011 Whiting Ourselves Out, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

2009 Responding to Darkness, Atlantic Works Gallery, East Boston, MA

2...