Michail Pirgelis – Sprüth Magers

Michail Pirgelis. Photo: Mathias Schmitt

The work of Michail Pirgelis (*1976) updates the traditions of post-minimalism, the readymade and conceptual art while simultaneously resisting them. His process usually begins with found materials from aircraft cemeteries in California and Arizona, where disused passenger planes wait to be dismantled and recycled. The Cologne-based artist explores the limits of our understanding of objects, while radically expanding our experience of the sculptural.

The first thing one notices in Pirgelis’s works is their subtle play with the aura of his found materials—materials that could both be considered industrial waste products or civilizational fragments. Larger than life metal objects lean against the walls like strange relics. Large-scale wall works with scratches, traces of paint and varnish have the look of heavy paintings. Floorboards with drilled holes and traces of carpet recall sections of a heavily used studio floor.

Pirgelis makes surprisingly small changes to the materials he finds, leaving the painted surfaces of most of his objects as he found them. He sometimes sands and polishes certain sections, partially removes logos and lettering or exposes rivet patterns. But essentially, the viewer bears witness to a surface marked by signs of wear and weather, by the sun and desert storms over the aircraft cemeteries. These are complex aesthetic surfaces with obvious painterly references, and the artist presents the objects as a form of found abstraction.

Pirgelis’s works derive their forceful presence from a fundamental self-questioning. The objects are not invented or produced, or even labeled in any way by the artist. Nor are they readymades in a strictly post-Duchampian sense, since the objects’ material and form have become entirely detached from their former function, making it almost impossible to discern their origin. The materiality of the works seems strangely familiar, and yet it is impossible to say why or what exactly is familiar about them. They are objects characterized by a deep-seated uncertainty: an uncertainty that leads them to thwart their own objectness and situate themselves on the threshold of non-objectness.

Pirgelis’s oeuvre defies conventional strategies of considering the artwork with startling consistency. Apart from obvious references to minimalism, post-minimalism, and readymades, some of these works recall Gordon Matta-Clark’s heroic dissections of homes and factory buildings or Rosemarie Trockel’s psychosocially charged objects. And yet they still come across as enigmatically uncategorizable. The urgent exclusion of sculptural knowledge in these works triggers a moment of confusion or disquiet in the viewer. What comes into play is an aesthetics of the indefinable, a sensory effect somewhere between rebellion and the sublime. Not least it accounts for a certain beauty—a beauty of emptiness, of things lived and lost, of semantic abandonment and contingency.

David Ostrowski & Michail Pirgelis: To Lose
Leopold-Hoesch-Museum, Düren, March 6–May 29, 2016

Works

Michail Pirgelis
Among the park, 2006

Michail Pirgelis
Among the park, 2006
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer, fibreglass, belts
880 × 380 × 410 cm
346 1/2 × 149 5/8 × 161 3/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
The Modernist, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
The Modernist, 2019
Fibreglass, aluminium, titan, lacquer
215 × 277 × 35 cm
84 5/8 × 109 × 13 7/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Closed Casino, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
Closed Casino, 2019
Fibreglass, aluminium, titanium, lacquer
305 × 267 × 15 cm
120 × 105 1/8 × 6 inches

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Introverse Arrangements
Installation view, BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne, June 6–August 3, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
Introverse Arrangements, installation view, BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne, 2019
Photo: Mareike Tocha

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Michail Pirgelis
Italian Radio, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
Italian Radio, 2019
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
71 × 95 × 12.5 cm
28 × 37 3/8 × 5 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Second Parcours, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
Second Parcours, 2019
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
134 × 85 × 4 cm
52 3/4 × 33 1/2 × 1 5/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
PM, 2014

Michail Pirgelis
PM, 2014
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
84.5 × 57.5 × 16.5 cm
33 1/4 × 22 5/8 × 6 1/2 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
The Houses III, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
The Houses III, 2019
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
99 × 90 × 5 cm
39 × 35 3/8 × 2 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Pawn House, 2019

Michail Pirgelis
Pawn House, 2019
Fibreglass, alumium
182 × 203 × 30 cm
71 5/8 × 80 × 11 7/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
When it is called moment, 2013

Michail Pirgelis
When it is called moment, 2013
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
260 × 482 × 185 cm
102 3/8 × 189 3/4 × 72 7/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Kapsel , 2010

Michail Pirgelis
Kapsel 1, 2010
Fiberglass, aluminum, titanium, lacquer
203 × 102 × 99 cm
80 × 40 1/8 × 39 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Trading News, 2015

Michail Pirgelis
Trading News, 2015
Aluminium, titanium, laquer
184 × 145 × 4 cm
72 3/8 × 57 × 1 5/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Last Call, 2018

Michail Pirgelis
Last Call, 2018
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
273 × 439 × 4 cm
107 1/2 × 172 7/8 × 1 5/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Die, 2013

Michail Pirgelis
Die, 2013
Aluminium, lacquer
202 × 202 × 50 cm
79 1/2 × 79 1/2 × 19 3/4 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Third Aerialist, 2017

Michail Pirgelis
Third Aerialist, 2017
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
275 × 346 × 185 cm
108 1/4 × 136 1/8 × 72 7/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Memory Games, 2017

Michail Pirgelis
Memory Games, 2017
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer
414 × 395 × 120 cm
163 × 155 1/2 × 47 1/4 inches

ANTI- Athens Biennale, Athens, installation view,
October 26 – December 9, 2018

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Details

Michail Pirgelis
Among the park, 2006
Aluminium, titanium, lacquer, fibreglass, belts
880 × 380 × 410 cm
346 1/2 × 149 5/8 × 161 3/8 inches

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Michail Pirgelis
Among the park, 2006

Michail Pirgelis
Among the park, installation view, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Dusseldorf, 2006

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