Michael T Workman

From Parts Unknown is a short documentary following Jesse “Madman” Manson, who decided to live out his fantasy by starting an underground Professional Wrestling league in the backyards of Spokane, Washington. Ten years later, Spokane Anarchy Wrestling is gaining momentum and popularity, but Jesse’s injuries from years of wrestling are proving to be a threat to the one thing that has given him an outlet to express himself.

Solo Exhibition, April 1st at Frontier Space, Missoula, MT

The manner in which consumer culture assigns value to objects has little to do with the cost of materials or production and everything to do with the artificial manipulation of desire through advertisement and display. Masses examines this manipulation and the resulting rituals surrounding consumerist consumption. Grotesque pink gelatin forms are rendered highly desirable through their display, scarcity, and a live product demonstration. All these efforts manipulate the viewer into partaking in the ritual of consumption. The installation was comprised of a faux banquet performance which was the place of literal consumption, but only for a select few. A product demonstration that mimics the style of a jewelry commercial, where the presenter reads a script off a teleprompter and relentlessly tries to seduce the viewer into consuming the Masses. After which two audience members were selected via raffle to sit at the banquet and take part in the consumption for 15 minutes before being escorted out. A pink room with a rotating mass on a pedestal in the style of a cake display and two televisions playing both videos side by side. Solo Exhibition at Real Good Art Space, in Missoula, MT, August 7th.    

This is not a trend is a multi-media installation that examines the value and commercialization of the touch of the artist. The unique touch of the artist is distilled into its most basic and literal form, the finger. The same tactics used by advertisers are employed to ultimately sell the touch as a useless consumer product, meant to be bought and tossed aside.

Gallery of Visual Arts (University of Montana), April 2015

A series of animated gifs which examine the cheap and undesirable. The series juxtaposes a “sophisticated” aesthetic with an “unsophisticated” subject in order to explore how aesthetics manipulate our perception of worth.

Exhibition at University Center Gallery (University of Montana), October 2014

Multiforms is an attempt to make the undesirable desirable through the use of modernist visual clichés. By transforming wasps into something of value rather than of disdain, I am ultimately an attempting to expose the superficial ways in which value can be placed on an object solely through aesthetics.

Mr. Workman is an examination on the modern working class male. I am attempting to illustrate his life style while creating a juxtaposition between a “low” subject matter and a “high” formal treatment. By using formal techniques to artificially ennoble his environment.

Constructed Situations (2016) Directed by Michael T. Workman

Animated Gif's made by Montana High School students during a workshop I taught at the Missoula Art Museum in April of 2015.