n his first solo show at envoy, Michael Yinger shows his command of space to explore the concept of "home," with a personal sense of found materials and abstract political references. Raised in the heartland but a New Yorker since 2001, Yinger often deals with the shifting nature of his... Read more
n his first solo show at envoy, Michael Yinger shows his command of space to explore the concept of “home,” with a personal sense of found materials and abstract political references. Raised in the heartland but a New Yorker since 2001, Yinger often deals with the shifting nature of his residence. With this installation and four separate scaled-down extractions, he lays bare the addictions that plague him, his generation, his fellow New Yorkers and his country.
Slumping down a wall, the American flag is featured prominently as a great behemoth felled by its own weight. Yinger’s flag is cobbled together using a wide range of materials including, but not limited to: bullets, petrol-soaked rags, plastic cups, glass shot glasses, a customized bottle of alcohol, toy trees, animal bones, lard, sand, and rocks. These are non-art objects that Yinger takes from everyday life while walking through Manhattan and Brooklyn. His work is often an organizational task that places objects on the floors and walls of the gallery is ways that suggest drawing or painting. The rebelliousness of Yinger’s gestural refusal of ideas of high and low suggests the gritty hedonism of hipster dive-bars and a range of abuses, such as the gluttony and the pillage of natural resources.
Yinger’s instinct for recycling and resistance in the face of American abundance and freedom isn’t entirely a show of youthful rebellion. Yinger’s heroically scaled installations in previous exhibitions have represented things from his autobiography, for instance maps of the United States or Buddhist symbols. Yet his choice of materials that are common to modern life complicates the idea of autobiography by showing how public the personal is in contemporary society.
With √¢‚Ǩ≈ìAnother Drink and I Won√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t Miss Her,√¢‚Ǩ¬ù the artist also reveals awe and affection for his country. The installation’s immensity suggests America’s grandeur, and its hodge-podge of materials evokes the diversity and democratic ideals of a Whitmanesque society where the common is lifted up to take its place in the sun.
Michael Yinger was born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1973. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Hunter College, NY, New York. His work has been shown both nationally and internationally, most notably with Green Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Midland Gallery, Indianapolis, IN, and Galerie Griesmar & Tamer, Pari
