Michael De Brito
michael@michaeldebrito.com

Eleanor Ettinger Gallery
119 Spring Street
Ground Floor
New York, NY 10012
www.eleanorettinger.com

The tablecloth, the visitors, the aprons may change yet there exists a realm of continuity brought forth by the unapologetic brushstrokes of one young artist. The hurried routine of modern life allows little time to acknowledge the more subtle things that require one to stop and think; to reflect. It becomes habit-forming to forget to see something. The immediacy of experience is sometimes out of practice, though. It takes the perspective of an artist to communicate this clear cohesion between people and objects - this unusual dichotomy of a person and their surroundings at any given moment.

Michael De Brito presents a unique and personal story on his canvases. Each painting represents another chapter of this ongoing familial tale. For the past five years he has chosen to paint familiar kitchen scenes where relatives and friends have come together on countless occasions. The audience is invited to sit with the subjects and examine the ritualistic patterns of a stranger’s life.

“These are all my memories. They just happen to end up being paintings but they’re still my memories of what I have taken with me.”

It is the unexamined life that is not worth living. De Brito presents the viewer with a personal invitation into the lives of others. One can almost hear the forks and knives against the ceramic plates, the uncorking of a bottle of red wine, the incessant conversation of different voices. It is one elaborate explosion of sensory experience. A phone rings, a last minute visitor descends the steps into the kitchen and takes a seat among the other guests. They begin to eat.

Using multiple sources of reference for his work the artist attempts to paint a reality within a particular moment in time. All the subtleties are there. Someone is in mid-sentence, while another person sucks the remaining flesh off a pork rib and dumps it into a metal plate. There is a dirty fork forgotten atop the tablecloth and then a moment of introspection by one of the subjects; they have inadvertently forgotten the presence of the invisible scrutiny of the artist’s eye. They are all characters in his story and they are playing themselves.

There is a sensibility within his subjects that is somehow translated onto his canvas. The focus is not only the subjects in themselves, rather the dualism that exists between all the objects in the painting. There is always an unseen relationship between the subjects and their surroundings whether or not the individual is conscious of this connection. Every person and inanimate object plays a role in this scene.

There is also present a coherent contradiction between the infinite objects that continue to be present in the kitchen scenes and the transient appearance of the visitors. There are recurrent themes within these paintings and one is forced to reflect on the relationship between the continued presence of these objects and one’s own finitude. Not surprisingly, the artist’s grandmother remains a constant element in this series of paintings. She has become a staple to the artist’s interest for the kitchen scenes and posits the question of whether or not the artist is telling his story or hers. It is being told against the backdrop of an isolated space subject to the ruthless process of time, a virtual time-lapse.

Perhaps kitchens reveal the most intimate stories about a specific place and time. After all, it is not a place where pretentious airs usually manifest themselves. It is where the arduous labor of a cook takes place to prepare a meal. It is where humble guests arrive and gather around a table to perform the ancient ritual of consumption. Prior to the act, though, is the preparation. The cook in her kitchen as she cleans the grime off the squid or removes the gizzards of a hen is as much as a representation of a culture as it is of a time. Beuckelaer presented a similar theme in his paintings The Cook and Slaughtered Pig. Beauckelaer’s paintings, done in the 16th century, retain their sense of value today. The actions are still the same although the passage of time has altered the process.

Indeed what has diminished today is the reception given to this type of artwork in the modern milieu of mass media. Contemporary artists have found themselves between a rock and a hard place. With the advent of mass culture arose the inevitable disconnect between artist and audience. There is little space to embrace the art of tradition and of history. Finally an artist offers a return to the objective, tangible space of a modern kitchen without sacrificing feeling or aesthetics. Everything is there. One can again begin to guiltlessly appreciate the value of custom, culture and intimacy.

 

Download Resume [PDF] [Word Document]