Village Street 

Curator: So, what's your immediate take on Michonze’s "Village Street"? Editor: I'm immediately drawn to the bareness of it. Not stark, but like roughly hewn materials and bodies emerging directly from earth; it feels unadorned, almost primordial in its simplicity. I wonder what the paint texture itself tells us. Curator: Absolutely. Michonze employs oil paint with such freedom, capturing this mundane scene. There is so much light, it almost washes them. The light itself seems like the principal material. I think he might be evoking that slow passage of a village life, bathed in a kind of dreamy, almost ancient sunshine. Editor: You say freedom, I see a focus on something specific: labour. These figures are neither idealized nor expressive, really. Look at the way the colors render the worn clothing; it's like seeing fabric not just as clothing, but also as protection against a brutalising world of sun, rain and tough work. There's a rawness there that's impossible to ignore. The production of an existence captured without sentimentalities. Curator: I see it as a community, a microcosm… notice that strange kind of glow on their limbs and faces. They all look quite thin too, which definitely changes that romantic ‘village life’ idea. Maybe the dogs even evoke this fragility? Maybe we're looking at that hardscrabble aspect. Editor: Precisely. But then how was the work *made*? Michonze uses visible, tactile strokes and a light impasto. His use of layering oil paint, almost scrubbing it into the canvas, allows us to think of each figure and object as physically and visually worked, a type of lived experience, in fact. It feels deliberately anti-academic. A truly *real* ism. Curator: Right. A "real" reality of experience that transcends easy readings. Michonze manages to give this seemingly mundane moment a quality that is deeply felt, lived in. Thank you, that material lens is very interesting to contemplate with these ghosts. Editor: Thank you. The more you dig into process, the more it comes alive, doesn't it?