Awakening 2021

Curator: What a captivating piece! This is "Awakening," an oil painting created by Michael Cheval in 2021. Its immediately striking. It feels both calming and chaotic, a real visual paradox. Editor: Absolutely. My eyes are drawn to the materiality here: the texture he's achieved with oil paint to mimic the water's turbulence versus the almost fluid draping of the cloth…it's quite masterful. Curator: Cheval's surrealist style certainly lends itself to this juxtaposition. You see a nude woman, almost floating amidst a stormy sea, wrapped in golden fabric. In the reflection of the water, there's what looks like a sunken ship mirrored from above. It gives the scene such a mythic quality. Editor: Yes, and I find myself considering the social implications. The sunken ship beneath a calm, if naked, woman seems rife with colonial allegory: those beautiful draperies obtained perhaps at great cost. The relationship to water and commerce makes the piece very layered. Curator: I interpret it more as a reflection on internal versus external states. She looks so peaceful despite the turmoil surrounding her. Perhaps it reflects on the artist's position in society too, creating beauty amidst, if you will, societal wreckage. Cheval often deals with such binaries. How the image reflects on art markets too… food for thought! Editor: Fair point, I’m just deeply invested in how that fabric has been manufactured. You see the details, so clearly depicted and it calls for us to remember the hands and conditions that make up such luxury. Curator: I can see your point, but it’s equally about the grand art historical traditions he’s playing with, too. A surrealist revisiting Romanticism’s fascination with sublime nature. Its quite loaded within an art market that perhaps privileges individual authorship above all else. Editor: I’m glad you reminded us that. These dialogues—between materiality and the museum wall, between process and politics—allow the viewer a more rich insight of the artistic creation as an end point that started in many places. Curator: Indeed. It makes “Awakening” more than just an image but an unfolding conversation.