"My paintings are all about moments. It's almost like a performance piece that ended up on a painting."
Impasto tributes to contemporary heroes at the limits of human endeavour.
Michael Kagan is an artist and space enthusiast fascinated by the limits of human potential. His mesmerising paintings depict surfers, race car drivers, and, most prominently, astronauts with oil on linen, screen-printing, and over-painted photographic prints. In both form and content, the compositions oscillate between extremes: up-close jagged abstract mark-making is revealed, while further away the brushstrokes tighten into representational scenes at the cusp of potential and fatal disaster. With a bold palette of blues, blacks, whites and dashes of red, Kagan’s signature brushstroke is sha...
Bio
Michael Kagan was born in 1980 in Virginia, USA, and now lives and works in Brooklyn. He received his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2005.
Collections
Notable collectors of his work include Yusaku Maezawa and Nike CEO Mark Parker, as well as Pharrell Williams, who he collaborated with in 2013 to create a special edition ready-to-wear collection.
Did you know?
Kagan cites seminal British painter Jenny Saville, who he studied under at graduate school, as the source of an enduring focus on mark-making within his canvases.
