Cloud Gate 2
- Michael Carini says his condition is part of why his paintings are so precise.
Photo by Kinsee Morlan“I kind of live a life of seclusion,” the 26-year-old says. “I don’t go out much. I have a neurological condition so I really don’t feel comfortable going out in public.”
Carini has Tourette syndrome, and, along with some of the negative symptoms—anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, mood swings and physiological tics—it’s part of why he’s so prepared for the interview. It’s also a big part of why his paintings are so technical and precise.
by Michael Carini
“Part of Tourette’s is that you want to control everything,” explains Carini, who’s surprisingly honest and open, partly because he seems oblivious of social norms.
The artist has produced three bodies of work. The first, The Lost Shepherd, a series of paintings depicting German shepherds set against backdrops of colorful grids, he completed while in college at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The paintings are big and painstaking in their precision (he used a single-hair brush to paint individual hairs on the dogs). But people didn’t seem to understand the work. He became known as “The Dog Guy” even though the dog was merely a symbol for his idea that even someone like a shepherd can get lost. Carini quit—partly out of frustration and partly because the detailed, figurative work was bringing out his obsession with control and perfection.
“I still do technical work,” he says. “I just don’t do representational work anymore. With my condition, the abstract allows me to be done when I want to be. The [shepherd paintings] were too much. I would not leave my house. I would even skip work and class because I had to paint until it’s done, and then when it was done, I had to immediately start something else.”
Carini’s second series, Look Right Through Me, took the form of smaller paintings of colorful vertical bars that, at first glance, look like the works of the abstract Color Field artists of the 1940s and ’50s. His paintings in the series, though, are much less expressionistic than most abstract work. He relied on masking techniques that produced almost perfectly straight, clean lines. And through layering, he hid figures behind the lines, which can only be seen if you look closely. He says people didn’t really get that work, either.
“I’ve always made work you have to see in person,” he says. “My work—it doesn’t photograph well…. And there’s a disconnect for my work. People who see it tell me they enjoy it, but they’ve never seen anything like it.”
After that series, Carini took a break. His condition worsened with the stress of college. So, after graduation, he returned to his hometown of San Diego. The change of scenery didn’t help. He didn’t paint for part of 2008 and most of 2009. In April ’09, he was attacked in his University Heights apartment by a friend of an ex-roommate. He suffered facial bruises and fractures, and his eye was swollen shut for weeks. Ironically, it was this traumatic experience that got him back into his studio.
“A lot of my work has been about finding positive energy in negative things and making a good thing out of a bad thing,” Carini explains. “Certain things in life are going to happen, and you have to react to it the best way that you can.”
His studio is different than most. All of his paints, primers, palette knives and art supplies are neatly lined up. Inside his closet, eight custom-made wood panels are stacked at the bottom and a plethora of backup supplies fill the shelves above.
“I’m always making purchases of things well before they run out,” he says. “Everything in my studio has to be perfectly aligned at a perpendicular angle. All the paints have to be facing a very certain way—it’s obsessive compulsiveness. And counting. A lot of times, I’ll pick a number of shapes, and I’ll have to pick a prime number of any certain element that goes into my painting. Even when I’m watching TV in my studio, when I’m painting, the volume level has to be incremental of fives.”
(Until I Was Nothing)" by
Michael Carin
A color chart hangs on one wall of the studio, and Carini has recently spray-painted the words “I am nothing” on another. His closet door is covered with scrawled notes of possible titles for future paintings. “So Full of Emptiness” and “Everything Dies Alone” are among his ideas.
More than a dozen paintings from his newest series, “The Upside of Down,” are hung around his apartment, and aside from the continued use of masking, layering and geometrical shapes and lines, this new abstract work is far different from what he’s done in the past. For the first time ever, he’s using uncontrolled elements like spray paint and drips.
“It really is a stretch and difficult for me to force myself to allow that element of chaos where I’m not controlling every single piece of my paintings,” he says. “So, doing the sprays and those things and allowing sort of the natural accidents—sort of the Asian aesthetic of wabi-sabi shibui, the beautiful accident—to show through has been extremely difficult for me.”
But Carini is slowly learning to let go. Within the last few months, he’s found inspiration in an unexpected place—a strip club. He met a dancer who became his first-ever muse. He began making paintings about her struggle with addiction. Months later, at the same club, he met another dancer who became his girlfriend; some of his newer work is inspired by her. He laughs a little when he tries to describe why he feels so at home at the club—he goes there almost every Friday night, sits on the same couch by a TV and watches ESPN— when he can barely even bring himself to go out to a regular bar with friends.
“It’s funny because, at times, I feel like I do the same thing for a living, just kind of being up on stage completely naked as an artist,” he says. “I think I like it because, with my condition, I always feel like I’m completely naked around other people. I feel like I’m completely open and exposed. So, there’s a comfort in being around other people who are, too. I’ve made more friends there than anywhere else. It’s strange, I know.”
Whatever the cause behind the transition in Carini’s work, the effect is good. His newest paintings are deeply expressive and emotional, and people finally seem to understand.
“Sometimes, after looking at my work,” he says, “people end up telling me about these horrific things that happened in their lives. They usually end up apologizing…. But it’s really the greatest compliment because it means they get it— they feel something.”
Michael Carini’s work is on view in Primal Forces: Pattern and Pathos at L Street Fine Art, 628 L St., Downtown, through the end of February. The opening reception is from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29. michaelcarini.com
