Michael Tole: "The Good Book, Emphasis on Good"

Ferrara Showman Gallery is proud to present The Good Book, Emphasis on Good, the third gallery solo exhibition of Orlando-based painter, Michael Tole. Featuring distinct series: "The Good Book, Emphasis on Good" and “artistic nudes”. About Ferrara Showman Gallery is proud to present The Good Book, Emphasis on Good , the third gallery solo exhibition of Orlando-based painter, Michael Tole. Unveiling eighteen new paintings, the exhibition brings together two new, distinct series: revisionist biblical works and “artistic nudes”. The former examines the thematic congruities shared by banned books and various Christian allegories; and the hypocrisy therein. The latter posits modern masters Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys’ as social media influencers, critiquing the performative, voyeuristic, and absurd aspects of this cultural phenomena through the lens of a contemporary artist. The exhibition will be on view 28 October through 5 December with an opening reception on 7 November and a closing reception on 5 December, both from 5-8 PM, as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings . Tole discusses the inspiration for his latest body of work . . . The past few years have seen an exponential growth in government censorship and book banning in certain regions of the US. The same states that are leading the nation in book banning are simultaneously adding the Christian Bible to the public-school curriculum. Texas, for example, now leads the country in book bans, even as it has required the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and has added Bible passages to required reading lists in literature and history classes. By illustrating the adult themes found throughout the Bible, the paintings in this exhibition expose the blatant hypocrisy of those who claim to be protecting children from adult themes in literature, while also mandating that they read from a book that contains fratricide, war, genocide, slavery, plural marriage, sex, sexual slavery and coercion, sex trafficking, prostitution, rape, gang rape (heterosexual and homosexual), the worship of pagan gods, corpse mutilations and dismemberment, infanticide, cannibalism of a child, human sacrifice, child sacrifice, and of course, torture and deicide. Beyond exposing hypocrisy, this exhibition poses the question: What constitutes a “good” book? What constitutes “virtue” in literature and the arts, especially in light of the fact that the Bible (often called “The Good Book”) is filled with horrors and evil people? What is the purpose of literature and art in culture? Is virtue as simple as a lack of vice? How do we decide what is and is not acceptable? And what is lost when we are too squeamish to allow certain themes into our artistic discourse? *read extended text below and further artist’s notes on each individual painting via the online exhibition alongside respective paintings ARTISTIC NUDES My first professional show was in the project room of Conduit Gallery in Dallas, Texas. As I stood sheepishly by my paintings, a dignified Dallas dowager with a perfect silver chignon and wrapped in a fur (indubitably real) lazily commented, “Good looking and talented…you’ll go far,” as she brushed by me on her way out the door. That was over twenty years ago, and times have changed. A decade ago, my wife began forcing me to put my artwork on social media. I am a luddite, and this did not appeal to me in the slightest, but I followed directions and did it. Slowly, I amassed a bit of a following. Next she demanded that I pose with my paintings. “People want to know who you are. Making it personal will increase your reach,” she said. So I again followed directions. Only this time, she was wrong. At 40, every time my face appeared in a post, I lost followers. I don’t mean I lost a couple of bots. I mean I lost dozens of followers. So much for that. I was not to be an influencer! Whatever advantage my youthful looks may once have imparted to me were no longer optimized for the algorithm. This was not by my choice, but by the collective decision making of the social media universe. But it confronted me with a reality that has only come into clearer focus with time. Social media demands that the artist also be an artwork. The paintings in the, Artistic Nudes, series reimagines modernist masters as social media influencer artists. As social media has become an indispensable tool for artists to promote their work, it has also changed how the public sees and discovers artists. Though the artist as solitary genius toiling in a lonely studio away from prying eyes was always a suspect notion, product of a cherry-picked group of early modernists like Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh who moved outside of the artistic mainstream of their day, today such self-isolation is simply not an option. Social media demands that the artist create not just discrete artworks for appreciation, contemplation, and consumption, but also that they create a marketable artistic persona for appreciation, contemplation, and consumption. Views are money, and money funds art. Even if the artist is holed up in a dark damp Parisian garret, the intrusive eye of the cell phone camera and the voyeurism of the social media universe destroys the possibility of creative isolation even as it heightens artistic visibility. Creativity is now a public performance for consumption by the masses. The notion of performance is not new in the art world, of course. Performance artists from Joseph Beuys to Janine Antoni, to Jackson Pollock have made the performative act central to their art practice. But there has never been a period when technology placed such a spotlight on the physical person of the artist. I now see many artists on social media platforms who are blurring the lines between artist, fashion, lifestyle, and model. It is a reaction to a new way of being an artist in the world created and necessitated by what has become an indispensable piece of artistic infrastructure—social media. The creative act itself is now a voyeuristic performance, and the artist often is the artwork as much as the painting they slowly spin around in their “big reveal.” And for better or worse, artists must learn to maximize this tool to survive. It is becoming ever more compulsory. The six paintings in this series reimagine Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys as social media influencer artists. Performance, always integral to their work, now extends to their presentation to the world, and a new kind of voyeurism is injected into their imagined creative practices. This work also intends to highlight the juxtaposition of the gender dynamics of Modernism and the world of social media, and the pressures of optimizing, or maxxing, ourselves as content for the social media algorithm. It unavoidably calls up “the Gaze” and objectification with regards to people and artworks, and all the gender dynamics (regressive and progressive) that come along with it. To be clear, though there is an element of satire in this work, I am not being judgmental of artists. Art is a hard business, and we must avail ourselves of whatever advantages we may have. I would do it too, if I could. I tried it. I no longer have this option. We can critique the game and still love the player. Press Release cont’d Michael Tole is a figurative painter currently living in Orlando, Florida with his wife and two daughters. Born in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, he graduated from UT Austin with a BFA in painting in 2000. A year later, he became the youngest artist ever represented by Dallas’ Conduit Gallery where he showed for 15 years. For the first half of his career, he created photo-based paintings of retail interiors that explored issues of class and the relationship of painting and photography. After relocating to Tempe, AZ his work experienced a significant shift to fantastical figurative inventions based on pop culture imagery he has encountered via his two daughters’ taste in music videos, as well as his proximity to the twin capitals of America’s fantasy industrial complex: Hollywood and Las Vegas. This work attempts to contextualize their brand of Disney-esque hedonism within a broader historical view of Western visual culture. As fate would have it, he relocated in the summer of 2024 to Orlando, another node of America’s fantasy industrial complex. Tole’s work has been exhibited nation-wide, in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, and New Orleans. Most recently his work was featured and awarded honors in the Wiregrass Museum Biennial in Dothan, AL and ArtFields in Lake City, SC. He has won several grants, including the $50,000 Hunting Art Prize, and the Kimbrough Grant. His work has been reviewed in Art Forum International, San Francisco Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and Hi-Fructose.com. For more information, press, or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on social media: @FerraraShowmanGallery + @MToleArt + @ArtsDistrictNewOrleans. Read more Toggle Painting