MICHAEL HYMAN
M ichael Hyman’s paintings are an eclectic mix of portraiture, surrealism and commentary on social roles and spirituality. At times he mixes bright, Pop-Art colors and images with painterly portraits of brooding, pensive, or thoughtful female nudes. He presents us with unique works that are first and foremost composed with an obvious passion for light and shadow and how they play upon the human body. With a quality reminiscent of Lucien Freud, Hyman presents his women in all their humanity, evoking mood as shadows fall upon skin and ribcage and half-hidden faces. His works are explorations of character both as individual and also as social being, and the questions of spirituality and its place in a consumer culture in which women are treated as objects. These women are messengers for Hyman, and for us, silently conveying their tales through their bodies and through the objects that float just inches from the backgrounds Hyman puts behind them.
These carefully chosen talismans open up for us the dimensions of these women as real people in a social context. Comic book images, fashion magazines juxtaposed against Russian Orthodox icons, skulls, lollipops, flowers, letters--these objects at times seem to be affixed to a wall as if postcards or prints from the artist’s own life. The placement of shadows under them, however, shows us that these objects are floating and are not mere props from the artist’s studio or living space, and that these backgrounds are not walls. In fact, these are not real spaces in any sense, but manifestations of ideas, and psychological states, and the props are signs and symbols that enhance the subject’s mood with varying degrees of irony.
Michael Hyman has added an extra dimension to naturalist portrait, just as he adds a visceral humanity to surrealism. Both impulses anchor and support each other and through the synthesis, he is able to present us with works that comment on the human and social conditions. His contemplation of life is presented before us with truthfulness and beauty, and he invites us to take in his works in that same spirit.
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