Michael Bauer: Propelled into the past and oozing from his glands

He wakes. Beneath him the black earth is cool and moist.

He lies on his back in a field of scarlet grass;

a soft gust of wind comes by, ruffling the blades, and they melt into a stream of blood. 

The sky is iron-blue,

an intensely transparent color that briefly sets up a desperate clamor in his skull.

He finds the sun: low in the heavens, larger than it ought to be, looking somewhat pale

and vulnerable, perhaps flattened at top and bottom.

Pearly mists rise from the land and swirl sunward, making vortices of blue and green and red lacings as they climb.

A cushion of silence presses against him. He feels lost. He sees no cities, no scars of man’s presence anywhere in this meadow, on those hills, beyond that valley.

Slowly he lifts himself to his feet and stands facing the sun.

-Son of Man by Robert Silverberg (1971)

Propelled into the past and oozing from his glands, Michael Bauer's first exhibition with Megan Mulrooney marries an interest in atmosphere and narrative with a complex meditation on the formal qualities of painting—line, texture, color, and form. Executed on a more intimate scale than the large canvases he has worked with in recent years, each work brings viewers into a distinct scene within the world of the exhibition. The compositions capture abstracted figures and environments that revel in their own deconstruction, evoking a melancholic sense of peace amid environmental decay. Advancing one step beyond the turbulence characteristic of Bauer’s earlier works, these paintings reach toward a quiet aftermath, where aesthetic and ecological disorder is matched with serenity and reflection.

The exhibition was created during a period when Bauer was immersed in science fiction novels of the "dying earth" subgenre. The painting titles, such as Awaiting nightfall, stunned and dwarfed - tears had cut channels in the dust on his face and The eye left the broken head, amused by the past, were inspired by these novels by authors like Jack Vance, Samuel Delaney, Clark Ashton Smith and David Bunch. They offer viewers a glimpse into a world in which the boundaries between the human and the environment are porous, a world that glows beautifully under massive suns and moons, where knights lay down their swords and swamplands transmogrify with massive force.

“There is a certain warmth and calm that emanates from all the [dying earth] stories, and that always had a welcome impact on me. By imagining empty landscapes, by imagining the last breaths of their visitors, there is a feeling of peace (at last),” says Bauer. 

Bauer belongs to a generation of German painters who emerged in the early 2000s. His work bears the signature marks of his training in abstraction, demonstrating spontaneity, gestural excess, and a dedication to creating surprising structures that underlie his compositions. His most recent works are his most atmospheric yet, pairing intricate surfaces with environments that channel the irradiant atmospheres of otherworldly landscapes.

“I think of the larger-scale works from the last few years as functioning like a prequel to the smaller works for this show. Having placed the figures in my previous works in a whirlwind of entropy, they are now grappling with the results. Echoes from previous energies surround them, immersing them in a space that is slowly fading. By getting colder, it might also get warmer again.”

Michael Bauer was born in 1973, Erkelenz, Germany, and lives and works in New York. Selected exhibitions include Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome, IT; Lyles & King, New York, NY; Half Gallery, New York, NY; Norma Mangione Gallery, Turin, IT; HOTEL, London, UK; Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, CH; Lisa Cooley, New York, NY; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Alison Jacques Gallery, London, UK. His works are held in collections worldwide including the Kunstsaele Berlin, the Saatchi Collection, Sammlung Boros, and the Zabludowicz Collection.