The
Renaissance
Society

This exhibition of Singer's recent work contains eight abstract charcoal, chalk and collage prints and one sculptural piece. Singer is a 35-year old artist whose best-known work has been sited directly in the landscape. He works with light, thin, natural elements such as sticks, twigs, bamboo, or grasses, arranging them into fragile constructions that integrate almost seamlessly into their surrounding bogs, marshes, and swamps. However, he has also maintained a studio practice, and his indoor pieces are as sensitive to their spaces as the outdoor ones. This exhibition contains eight abstract charcoal, chalk, and collage works, and one sculptural piece--First Gate Ritual 2/80. First Gate is a large low-lying construction, in which each linear element depends on the others to give it support. The entire lattice-like structure is held together only by tension. The two-dimensional works share a similar linear and rhythmic quality. " The lush charcoal surfaces are smudged and spiky, linear as nature is linear, with the flow and sudden clearing of landscape, the patchy density of thickets, echos of water-swallowed shapes and winged blurs." (Lucy Lippard, Works by Michael Singer, Smith College Museum of Art, 1977.) Singer's Rituals celebrate, flux, the passage of time, and an impressionistic sense of moment