"My work explores subjects drawn from close to home: a circumscribed world of neighborhood streets and houses, interiors and window views. The subjects are depicted after dark, the familiar locations transformed by night light and shadow. People are absent, but their presence is implied by porch lights, parked cars and snowy footprints.
My most recent series of drawings, entitled Shifting Visions, places the viewer inside looking out, the darkened scene beyond the window obscured by reflections of the lighted interior space. In these complex compositions, walls dissolve, light fixtures hang from treetops, and parked cars merge with dining room furniture. The images present an everyday world that is subtly destabilized, the observer caught between inside and outside, near and far.
The drawings are based on my observations of specific locations, the elements rearranged and woven together in a way that is intended to feel at once cohesive and disjointed. They are imaginative reconstructions of the subject matter, often combining different viewpoints, locations, seasons or times of day. In building the compositions, I used what I observed in the window reflections as a guide, blurring edges to connect near and far, dissolving forms into shadows, and establishing multiple light sources to create shifting focal points within the compositions.
The drawings are made with conte crayon on duralar, a translucent polyester drafting film. Duralar has a slippery, non-absorbent surface that makes it easy to soften, smear, or completely erase the image. Sections of the drawings were repeatedly built up and wiped away throughout the working process, yielding drawings in which some parts are crisply articulated and other parts are soft and atmospheric. For me, the process of repeated revisions and restatements - and the resulting contrasts of sharp and soft elements - connect to the experience of losing and regaining memories, of forgetting and recalling that is at the heart of the work."
Michael Kareken, a Tacoma, Washington native, moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1993 after ten years of studying and working in New York. He has been the recipient of grants and awards from the Bush Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, Arts Midwest, the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts, among others. Kareken is a recipient of the Louise Nevelson Award for Art from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and printmaking award from the National Academy of Design. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Kareken is Professor Emeritus at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he taught painting and drawing from 1996 to 2023.
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