Michael Sieben

The Michael Sieben opening "Smile Forever" at Art Palace provided the most consistently impressive show I've seen anywhere in Austin. It looked so great in that space! Especially the surprise kicker. He executes his playfully dark humor with a cast of both sweet and menacing characters. You can see his skateboard roots, and with the use of text there is a comic book quality, all with an air of peculiar sophistication. A self-aware show with adorable cameras reigning.

Here's the press release for the exhibition:
"Fueled by nostalgia, Michael Sieben's work deals primarily with a loss of innocence. Autobiography plays heavily into Sieben's first gallery solo exhibition of drawings, painting and sculpture. Combining the aesthetic languages of skateboard graphic design and children's book illustrations, Sieben works in a style he refers to as "soft-core gore." Monsters tread a fine line between sweet and grotesque, and security cameras are there to record it all. The title of the show refers to, on one hand, smiling in the face of adversity, and on the other, the loss of privacy in our contemporary digital age, where cameras, security, television and otherwise, are constantly recording our images. Between these two poles, we might as well smile forever." -Risa Puleo














Detail:






And the surprise kicker!











Michael Sieben designs skateboard graphics for Bueno Skateboards, writes and illustrates for Thrasher Magazine, and is a part of the staff at OK Mountain.