MICHAEL LEWY
Now more than ever.
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Artifacts: City of the Forgotten

Inspired by Science fiction B movies and television, I began making these self-portraits at the start of the covid 19 pandemic.

I was never attracted to monsters as a kid. It was only later in life that I became fascinated by them. As I started to make these monsters, what interested me the most was their asymmetry and imperfectness.

We live in a world that celebrates beauty and perfection. Monsters are the opposite of this; they represent failure. Being a middle-aged man, I identify with them. As we get older, we watch our bodies decay and youth disappears. This transformation happens slowly, unlike the quick dissolves that we are used to seeing in films. As we age, we become invisible in a world that only appreciates beauty and success.

Artifacts: City of the Forgotten

My work has always been shaped through technology, using machines, a camera, or a computer as intermediaries to create art. This past year, I set out to learn how to paint and draw. I failed, at least in the traditional sense, but failure often leads to something unexpected.

I scanned those rough paintings into the computer, using them as texture maps applied to 3D digital models. The process transformed the paintings into digital objects. The marks and lines created divots and wear, making them look like they had been weathered over time.

They felt like totems from a lost civilization—relics of something left behind, buried under the weight of forgetting. It made me think about history and what happens when we forget the past. What happens when we live in a permanent present? All one has to do is look around to see the consequences.