Michael Hambouz

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

My general creative practice gravitates around my relationship with chromaesthesia—channeled dimensions and colors in response to music--which assists in sparking compositional prompts. This special phenomenon also acts as a meditative form of self-prescribed escapism to help process bouts of loss and reflections on life spent in the rural Midwestern United States, New York City, and in the cybersphere as a first-generation Palestinian-American. Experimenting freely with mediums, I encourage unexpected challenges and mutations in form to bloom in the studio, resulting in conceptually abstracted multidimensional paintings and prints, intricate layered cut paper works, sculpture, drawings and animations. I am currently very motivated by my latest series of geometric relief paintings that incorporates recognizable imagery broken up across three-dimensional planes commingling with embedded symbols, codes, and architectural forms as vehicles to record my daily observations and transformational growth. Using abstraction, coexisting physical and painted patterns, and hidden "easter egg" elements as tools of obfuscation to lure viewers intimately closer, to look beyond the seemingly familiar and discover connections to deeper narrative interpretations.

Artwork