Digging deep
This story was featured in the December 2018 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art December 2018 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
SOUTHERN California native Michael Azgour recalls seeing more seascape paintings as a child than he can count. Though he appreciated their realism, it wasn’t a style that excited Azgour, whose own interest in painting didn’t emerge until years later, when he discovered the bold, exploratory style of the modernists, fauvists, and expressionists. “It allowed me to see that art didn’t have to be about duplication—that art could be about invention,” he says. “I started experimenting with still lifes, and soon it became more about the colors, shapes, and materials themselves.”
Since he earned his master’s degree in studio art from the Academy of Art University in 2005, Azgour’s passion for experimentation has only deepened. Today he resides in Krakow, Poland, but for a few months each year, he returns to San Francisco to teach drawing and painting at Stanford University. Back in Krakow, he works on large-scale paintings that explore—among other things—the impact of digital media on contemporary culture. “A lot of my work addresses this notion of duality and the balancing aspects of opposites,” says Azgour.
The artist’s subjects, while representational, are partially broken down into horizontal lines, geometric shapes, and pixelated abstraction. “I like to let the viewer think about the balance between the real and unreal,” says the artist. “A lot of what I’m painting now has to do with ephemerality, movement, and memory, versus photography, which is very definite, hard-edged, and still.”
Azgour is represented by GF Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM; Hohmann Fine Art, Palm Desert, CA; Slate Contemporary, Oakland, CA; Claire Carino Contemporary, Boston, MA; and www.azgour.com.
This story was featured in the December 2018 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art December 2018 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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