AT SKYLIGHT: CHRISTOPHER MICHLIG presents FILE UNDER: SLIME w/ J.C. Gabel
Who's ready for slime-time? Join us for a conversation with Christopher Michig about his deep dive into the pop-culture history of the gooey and stretchy in File Under: Slime.
We are well acquainted with its qualities in conjunction with certain things from which we tend to recoil but to which we are also at times fervently attracted. Despite being everywhere, slime is a surprisingly unexamined cultural phenomenon. File Under: Slime collates a cultural history of "slime" and "sliminess," with particular emphasis on precedents in pop-culture, contemporary art, ecology, science fiction, literature, critical theory, and cinema.
The appearance of slime in such films as The Blob, Ghostbusters, and Poltergeist are diligently and humorously analyzed, commercial and graphic design precedents are incorporated, and the work of such artists as Lynda Benglis, Cindy Sherman, Robert Smithson, Sterling Ruby, and Jason Rhoades are connected within a broad mesh of corollary examples emphasizing the dynamic and elastic visual signification of slime. Alongside a multitude of visual references, File Under: Slime is supplemented with literary and theoretical references from such writers as Jean Paul Sartre, Julia Kristeva, Mike Kelley, Rosalind Krauss, Laura Mulvey, Georges Bataille, and others.
Christopher Michlig was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and is an enrolled member of the Seldovia Village Tribe. He received an MFA in Sculpture from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 2007, and a BA in Fine Art from the University of Oregon. Making work in a wide range of media, the primary focus of Michlig's practice is the manipulation of public formats of communication to explore, expose, and upend the aesthetics and poetics of urban space. His work has been reviewed and featured in the Los Angeles Times, Proximity Magazine, Mousse Magazine, Saatchi Online, Flavorpill, New City Art Chicago, among others, and his solo debut at Jail Gallery was reviewed in the May 2008 issue of Artforum. Christopher's 2012 exhibition, White Noise was named one of the 2012 top 100 fall exhibitions by Modern Painters magazine, and was reviewed by Geoff Tuck for Notes On Looking. He lives in Eugene, Oregon.
J.C. Gabel began his career in publishing at the age of 19. In the mid-’90s, he handmade the first issue of Stop Smiling,“The Magazine for High-Minded Lowlifes” and developed it into a full-color glossy featuring timeless themes, original stories, and interviews you couldn’t read anywhere else. It grew for 15 years before transitioning into books.
In 2012, Gabel moved from Chicago to Los Angeles to work on two large book projects for Chronicle and Taschen. A couple of years later, Pitchfork commissioned him to create The Pitchfork Review, a print quarterly. The following year, he founded Hat & Beard Press with the intention of finding a more artist-friendly way of producing and selling books in the 21st Century.
Previously, Gabel was a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Bookforum, The Paris Review, LA Times, New York Times, and Wallpaper.