Carriageworks, 2022

AMPLIFY

Sydney Contemporary/ACCA, Sydney, 4 -8 September

Michael Staniak’s practice concerns the changing dynamics of images and materiality in light of the proliferation of social and digital media. His process-oriented paintings and sculptures explore the relationship between two- and three-dimensionality in digital images.

Presenting a new suite of bronze sculptures, Staniak looks to the origin of painting in the cave, where artistic instinct found its first expression, by replicating the textured surfaces of cave walls from scans available on open-source CAD software. Uneven, rough, and heavily saturated with colour, the sculptures generate what the artist has termed as a ‘hypersurface’, meaning that the object produces a feeling of disorientation where areas of shadow and light are unclear and an objective viewing experience is inhibited.