MICHAEL SALERNO: Selected Works 1992 to 2009
Downtown Center East/West Galleries
300 W. Second Street
Pomona, CA 91766
Michael Salerno: Piercing the Paradox, Ascertaining Abstraction
GAUGE, GAGE [geyj, gAj]
Noun. 1: measurement according to some standard or system. 2: an instrument for or a means of measuring or testing.
Transitive verb. 1a: to measure exactly. b: to determine the capacity or contents of. 2a: to check for conformity to specifications or limits. b: to measure off or set out.
The chance to see the oeuvre of Michael Salerno is to have seen one of the rare gauge blocks of abstraction. In engineering, a gauge block is an absolute; a one inch gauge block is exactly one inch, traceable to a single piece of metal exactly one inch long sitting in a refrigerated room at the National Bureau of Standards in a suburb of Washington D.C. When precise engineering is needed, gauge blocks all over the world are used to build measuring equipment and these hundreds of thousands of instruments record calculations based on that one piece of metal. You don’t want to be on the airplane with parts that were built with measurements that are not direct descendents of that gauge block.
The paintings and drawings of Michael Salerno exist in the same paradox of hermetically sealed certainty as that metal D.C. inch. In a Salerno you can see the absolute foundations of abstraction free of almost any variables. Every single abstract painting that you will encounter is visually traceable to a Michael Salerno artwork. There might be no literal or historical connection, but the artist has mastered composing the essence of non-objective artwork.
By 1992, the artist had arrived at his mature composing of the extremes of abstraction – the all-over composition dripped by Jackson Pollock was revisited by Salerno in paintings of loose, labored brushwork and detailed line bent on ambling into the oblivion of pictorial space. In attempting to tackle eternity he brought along all of art history, especially abstraction, with his effort.
In completing a picture without a specific certain composition, yet still weighted with definite elements, Salerno composes the gauge blocks of abstraction to which we can all refer when we measure our enjoyment of anyone else’s picture. In isolating line, any drawing can be gauged by how far afield from a Salerno its line roams. In finding the color composed by an aura of all colors, art history can be seen as a simple reorganization of subatomic Salernos. When order is present in a picture, this rigor can be measured against the whole of a Salerno painting. When chaos reigns amidst a wallwork, the depth of this energy can still be structurally analyzed in its relationship to the sum of Salerno’s parts.
Essentially, the gauge block is the anonymous link between all measuring devices worldwide and Salerno’s art has a link to every painting. Neither he nor the gauge block intend that to be so. It is more his nature rather than his conscious effort.
The works themselves are sensuous without being sentimental, cerebral without any pretense of overanalytical intellectualism, and as optically pleasing as many of them are, they all remain assertive as individual artworks and are never submissively decorative. They relate well to interesting and important art no matter how the grand march of art history is made malleable by trend and time. In their imperceptible ambiguity, they make any art viewing experiences you will have, from now on, more defined. To manifest such a paradox is an artistic accomplishment worthy of a retrospective’s acclaim.
-Mat Gleason
300 W. Second Street
Pomona, CA 91766
Michael Salerno: Piercing the Paradox, Ascertaining Abstraction
GAUGE, GAGE [geyj, gAj]
Noun. 1: measurement according to some standard or system. 2: an instrument for or a means of measuring or testing.
Transitive verb. 1a: to measure exactly. b: to determine the capacity or contents of. 2a: to check for conformity to specifications or limits. b: to measure off or set out.
The chance to see the oeuvre of Michael Salerno is to have seen one of the rare gauge blocks of abstraction. In engineering, a gauge block is an absolute; a one inch gauge block is exactly one inch, traceable to a single piece of metal exactly one inch long sitting in a refrigerated room at the National Bureau of Standards in a suburb of Washington D.C. When precise engineering is needed, gauge blocks all over the world are used to build measuring equipment and these hundreds of thousands of instruments record calculations based on that one piece of metal. You don’t want to be on the airplane with parts that were built with measurements that are not direct descendents of that gauge block.
The paintings and drawings of Michael Salerno exist in the same paradox of hermetically sealed certainty as that metal D.C. inch. In a Salerno you can see the absolute foundations of abstraction free of almost any variables. Every single abstract painting that you will encounter is visually traceable to a Michael Salerno artwork. There might be no literal or historical connection, but the artist has mastered composing the essence of non-objective artwork.
By 1992, the artist had arrived at his mature composing of the extremes of abstraction – the all-over composition dripped by Jackson Pollock was revisited by Salerno in paintings of loose, labored brushwork and detailed line bent on ambling into the oblivion of pictorial space. In attempting to tackle eternity he brought along all of art history, especially abstraction, with his effort.
In completing a picture without a specific certain composition, yet still weighted with definite elements, Salerno composes the gauge blocks of abstraction to which we can all refer when we measure our enjoyment of anyone else’s picture. In isolating line, any drawing can be gauged by how far afield from a Salerno its line roams. In finding the color composed by an aura of all colors, art history can be seen as a simple reorganization of subatomic Salernos. When order is present in a picture, this rigor can be measured against the whole of a Salerno painting. When chaos reigns amidst a wallwork, the depth of this energy can still be structurally analyzed in its relationship to the sum of Salerno’s parts.
Essentially, the gauge block is the anonymous link between all measuring devices worldwide and Salerno’s art has a link to every painting. Neither he nor the gauge block intend that to be so. It is more his nature rather than his conscious effort.
The works themselves are sensuous without being sentimental, cerebral without any pretense of overanalytical intellectualism, and as optically pleasing as many of them are, they all remain assertive as individual artworks and are never submissively decorative. They relate well to interesting and important art no matter how the grand march of art history is made malleable by trend and time. In their imperceptible ambiguity, they make any art viewing experiences you will have, from now on, more defined. To manifest such a paradox is an artistic accomplishment worthy of a retrospective’s acclaim.
-Mat Gleason
