DANCING PROTESTING WAITING AND WORKING Mike Meiré

Mike Meiré presents a solo exhibition at the Gallery Ruttkowski;68 in Cologne titled DANCING PROTESTING WAITING AND WORKING. Actions we all have somehow experienced during lockdown in 2020 on the threshold into our Post Covid World.

Meiré understands painting as a performative act. Therefor he soaks car tires in color paint and thus leaves their imprint as traces on the canvas. The tires hovers above it for a few moments before it is slammed onto the canvas by the artist. A few seconds between control and loss of control determine the outcome of each work, making them entirely unique. Sometimes they are completely recognizable in their profile, sometimes only fragments of their curves can be seen, or their traces can be followed as a painterly gesture.

In muted, occasionally strong industrial colors and minimalist gestures, the paintings oscillate between different styles of physical states.The tires themselves also find their place in the exhibition space. As ready mades subsequently to Duchamp, Mike Meiré places car tires as colossal columns in the space, referring to ancient architectural elements and their omnipresence as designed objects with their ubiquitous material. Rauschenberg and Cage already had driven a car over paper, claiming the track as part of the structure of time. Meiré, on the other hand, refers to the independence of dynamics, their control and their loss, which he seems to reveal as a generic source – as an indispensable fascination to express our contradictory times.

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