Currently on exhibit at the Bartha Contemporary Gallery in London (ongoing until August 18th) Mike Meiré’s works as art director for magazines and newspapers, making him familiar with using content. He came to wonder how we can deal with information, in an age where we’re more dependent on information. Newspapers inspired him to use newspaper as a canvas: information changes, and newspapers are old within 24 hours, they’re supply temporary information. Focussing on the structure of the information, he deleted the content of the newspaper to free your mind of the information flow. And he added colors as a metaphor to the news originally printed in the newspapers, thereby making the content timeless in a way. Colors to Mike aren’t a fashion code. He creates something abstract and contemporary that reaches out to the past.
The black and white represents control, ego, logic and intellect. The other colors he uses represent diversity, like red and green on one piece, and to contrast with the logic the black and white represent. They’re used to add balance to the composition. The other colors are the flesh so to speak. To achieve a classic beauty, he choose tones that are slightly off and less pretty to make them more interesting and more real. The colors of the papers (like pink for financial papers) to Mike represent lack of control, as if we don’t really control the news and the world the news is created in.
In his piece Feeling (above), he gave the newspaper a skin color, pink, to represent the human condition of getting old. Paint on the paper starts to crack, especially where the paper is folded, mimicking the aging skin of humans.
