Michel Droge
Piezophileic Heart, Oil on canvas
Michel Droge is a painter and printmaker whose work engages with the environment and ideas of multi-species, non-binary, and entangled life systems. Inspired by the landscape, mapping, and environmental research, their large-scale abstract paintings unravel existing grids and structures and make way for new ones that are emerging. They model a queer matrix in conversation with nineteenth-century landscape schools and naturalists to de-master the landscape. My practice is rooted in environmental research and collaboration, synthesizing ideas in the studio with material physicality and emotion.
The Ocean has been a primary source of study and inspiration and is a foundational element in My practice. In early 2021 after reaching out to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, I was paired with Dr. Beth Orcutt, a senior research scientist who studies microbial life in the deep sea. Our first meetings took place over zoom while I was an artist in residence at Ellis Beauregard Foundation. They spent that residency meeting with Beth, studying the deep-sea footage and learning about the potentially devastating impacts of deep-sea mining on our ecosystem. I explored these ideas in the studio with painting and drawing to combine the science I was learning with the emotional responses I felt. The gorgeously sublime and virtually unmapped areas that Beth was showing me elicited feelings of reverence and awe and a deep desire to protect such a primordial and sublimely beautiful place.
Throughout this past year, Beth and I have continued our meetings in person in the studio and at the lab. This year Beth has been conducting research at Luʻuaeaahikiikapapakū - Ancient Volcanoes in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument – a natural preserve in Hawaii to study the deep sea. Her approach to these areas is intentional and considered. I have learned much about the many levels of understanding that goes into the research and am moved by the levels in which Beth intentionally engages.
‘The sea affects every aspect of human life-generating oxygen, moderating climate, feeding us, providing source material for medicines, affecting weather patterns, etc. But it is also, according to a current debate in scientific circles, possibly the origin of life. The “primordial soup” theory (that we emerged as organisms generated in swamps) is now being challenged by the hypothesis that human life actually arose out of hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean…Abstraction serves these paintings well in the sense that our understanding of life at these depths cannot ever be complete. The riddle at the center of it all – how life actually emerges from the boiling environment of the vents – remains indecipherable and mysterious; in a word, abstract.’- Jorge Arango
Bigelow Laboratories Art /Science initiative connects artists and scientists to meet and share ideas. We see our collaboration as a means to bring awareness to a larger audience and to create a space to emotionally and philosophically engage with scientific research. The impacts of deep-sea mining are just now being explored, and the devastation could be irreparable. The violence of our mining practices should be brought to light and understood before we surge ahead with more destruction. Ironically, many of our solutions to fossil fuels require minerals and metals found in the deep sea. It is essential for us to understand the impacts of mining these resources before disturbing this vital ecosystem.
All The Light Below is my second group of works devoted to this collaboration, exploring the devasting impacts of mining the deep sea and the importance of conserving these mysterious, sublime, and primordial spaces.
