Michael Wilkinson - fluorochiaroscuro

P·P·O·W is pleased to present _fluorochiaroscuro_, Michael Wilkinson's first solo exhibition with the gallery. Known for his conceptual approach to artmaking and installation, this latest series of works develops the UK-based artist's concern with still life painting. Combining the optical illusionism of trompe l'oeil with non-representational interventions associated with the readymade, Wilkinson renders ordinary subject matter stunningly enigmatic. Updating the still life genre for our contemporary age, Wilkinson explores its innate ties to ephemerality with a self-awareness that is at once playfully ambivalent and earnestly serious. Wilkinson's meticulously executed paintings distill the essence of fleeting reality within a deceptively simple format. To produce them, he begins by photographing a variety of motifs – bouquets of gladioli, twisting cherry blossom branches, a solitary green apple – each subject characterized, in part, by its unique shape and color. Wilkinson sets these items in front of tightly stretched linen framed with thin aluminum, establishing a shared formal ground for the works in the series. The linen in the resulting paintings is "depicted" by areas where the surface is left blank, allowing them to function as both the material itself, and simultaneously, its representation. The completed works are situated within the same aluminum frames, creating another form of recursive engagement between subject and object. Wilkinson describes the technique used in his paintings as _fluorochiaroscuro_. Enhancing a conventional style of representation with the use of fluorescent pigments, Wilkinson's approach amplifies the effect of light hitting his various subjects. This intensification produces an altered experience of the everyday – a new form of realism illuminating the artist's heightened awareness of his surroundings. His fascination with still life painting first emerged during the 2020-2021 global pandemic and lockdown, during which time he experienced a prolonged sense of a suspended, decelerated reality. Wilkinson found himself becoming more attuned to domestic objects, which gave way to a concentrated perception of the shifts that come with the passing of time. Paying careful attention to the time of day and year in which the images take place, cut flowers metamorphose from generic motifs to precise moments in which a series of circumstances coalesce into a single, rhythmic composition. In works such as _Delphinium_, _Delphinium ii_, and _Delphinium iii_, all 2026, Wilkinson demonstrates this acute awareness by depicting the subtle changes that take place across a central subject over the course of a day. Shadows lengthen and grow less opaque, gradually becoming more abstract as the relationship between light and object transforms the image with each passing moment. Considering the quality of light and its directionality in relation to the painting's subject, each work becomes a thoughtful register of the interconnectedness of light, time, and space within a precisely given moment. The result is a charged peculiarity – a sense that one is witnessing an unfolding moment, with the knowledge that it has already passed. Throughout _fluorochiaroscuro_, Wilkinson sustains the beautiful mystery and playfulness of the still life genre, immersing the viewer in the curious materiality of the work, subverting the desire for illusion, and offering a reminder of the transient nature of our earthly existence.