Furniture becomes the work at Michael’s studio.
Michael Samuels works straight in the medium. He finds a simple everyday material and pushes it to somewhere it’s not supposed to go, resulting in a process that is more akin to that of a painter. From his own Hackney space located in a shared studio building, the artist reassesses old domestic pieces, reconfigures, and reconstructs them towards abstraction. “I spend as much time as possible here, and there are times when I don’t want to leave, but I have to due to commitments. I have some wonderful friends here, and we always take the time to have a coffee or look at each other’s work. Nothing is too serious, a sense of humour helps.” says Samuels, whose hands-on approach is stimulated by the use of everyday objects and domestic things that anyone could be surrounded by, such as furniture or DIY products, which he carefully selects in vintage markets or e-commerce’s just as eBay. His particular arrangement of intuitive working process along with conscious material decisions have created a body of work that is as immediate and instinctive as it is aesthetically aware. We recently checked in with Samuels to learn more about how he creates such intermingled three dimensional objects.