Michael Chattem
'Blow Out'
Silk Screen Print, 9/25, 2015
Paper & Image Size: 15 x 17.5"
Bio:
Chattem was born in Queens, but spent most of his adolescence in Connecticut. After high school, he moved to Cleveland to attend CIA. He earned a BFA in 2010, but the experience took its toll on him.
"I left school burnt out on institutional influence and bureaucracy and disenchanted with art making," admits Chattem. "I spent the next few years focusing mainly on playing drums in experimental music projects while maintaining a marginal visual art practice.
"In 2012, for the first time since school, I had a sizable studio and my art practice flourished," he says. "I returned to drawing as a primary medium and explored the fundamental tools for image making. My work moved away from a concept-based platform and began concerning itself with things like text and image, compositional relationships, color, space, scale and structural mechanics. Subjects like anxiety, perception and coping began to inform the work."