Distilled Blues 2020

Curator: Looking at this peculiar oil painting titled "Distilled Blues," created in 2020 by Michael Cheval, my first thought is – delightfully strange! The muted palette and meticulous detail give it an almost dreamlike, old-world feel. Editor: Absolutely. There's a striking dichotomy here, isn't there? It invites questions of performance, identity, and how these facets are constructed through art. What does this whimsical tableau seek to unpack? Curator: For me, the painting sings of the absurdity of existence! Look at these figures: one seemingly plays a flute connected to a strange, mechanical contraption, and the other plucks a lute with an almost vacant expression. It's as if they are extracting music from a bizarre machine of life itself! I picture melancholy piped through a whimsical distillery. Editor: Right, and that absurdity, to me, links directly to a longer artistic engagement with systems of power and the role of the artist. The elaborate costuming, juxtaposed with the almost robotic features of the figures, can be interpreted as a critique of enforced norms and behaviors. What are the social scripts we're all playing? Curator: The surreal elements – the pipes, the elongated shoes of the lute player, the birdcage near the broken wall – create a delicious visual dissonance. They feel symbolic, but resist easy interpretation, like little philosophical jokes. That faucet over the flute player's head… It makes you wonder if they are playing for something. Or someone. Editor: Precisely, those elements can be considered tools for unpacking the layers of societal control. Think of Foucault’s ideas around surveillance; that open-ended tap invites commentary about how these characters are observed, how we are observed and evaluated. The art is both the apparatus, and the players. Curator: So, Cheval, with a subtle dash of wit, encourages us to question the melody we’re dancing to. Is it our own tune or something manufactured, like a factory for emotions. Perhaps a call to turn off the pipes and start strumming to the rhythm of our own bizarre hearts. Editor: That sense of unease is potent, definitely. We're being invited, or rather challenged, to dismantle existing structures, examine the artifice around us. And maybe, as you hinted, learn to make our own strange, beautiful music.