Exit 101 works since 2000
Mitchel Confer
8 x 10 P.B. 98pgs.
$30.00 - 1-60052-004-9
artist website

In viewing Confer's work, one is sometimes reminded of a Duchamp or a Johns—not because of any noticeable stylistic similarities. Rather, the parallel is in Confer's ability to take a commonplace item and make it noticeable, urging the viewer to really study it. And yet the objects in his art convey no underlying meaning. They are not obviously symbolic. They have no totemic significance. In short, his works are not created to make a statement, and in a sense do not really mean anything– any more than a Bach fugue or a Haydn string quartet impart some underlying message.

Though gregarious in his private life, Confer demonstrates little interest in human subjects. His primary focus is on shapes, patterns, forms, and textures. At first glance, many of his works appear to be strictly abstract—visually engrossing studies of interpenetrating shapes and spaces. Yet on closer examination, one realizes he is actually looking at what would normally be considered mundane objects: an interlocking series of freeway overpasses, fields of wild grass bordered by sky and clouds, a densely grouped array of row apartments stacked and clustered on a hillside. Unremarkable everyday sights, yet somehow…different.