b. 1935 in Brooklyn, New York, USA

Lives and works in New York, USA

Michael Venezia’s long-standing interest in historical methods of paint application and his instant inquiry into various methods of applying paint lead him to create highly idiosyncratic paintings that follow a minimalist logic of reduction while simultaneously drawing from a wide range of pictorial traditions. Whether it is the effect created by the saturation of spray pain on canvas and paper, or the brush and palette knife effects of paint applied to narrow wooden blocks, Venezia always approaches painting as a mean to conjure a sensation of the eye ⏤ a perceptual experience more than a conceptual one. In considering painting as both an object and an action, he tries to avoid anticipating the final result. Instead, he conduces procedures and manoeuvres from which the painting emerges to exist in the present as a physical object.