Exhibition text:

In the obituary it describes all those he left behind. There are just his twins. They are the only living
heirs to their late father’s estate. They’ve always been one another’s shadow.

One has a lust for life. One wholeheartedly resents their very existence. In readying the estate for its
liquidation of assets one can’t bear to let go of anything. They idealize him in his absence. They love that
story as much as they loved him. The other reduces him to the mistreatment they both suffered in his
care and in the home. Only an entirely bad faith memory remained.

The aggrieved twin began having suddenly vivid dreams after he passed, such that they’d wake five or
six times each night. In those instances of passing between states of consciousness what was
remembered and what was invented became blurred. A staircase in their childhood home, which seemed
unclear if it had, in fact, been there, bedevilled many such dreams. Each step taken was colored by
paradox, seeping conflicting notions of security and menace, growth and regression, in that dreamlike
way of feeling. As assuredly as you trusted a step to bear weight did such sentiments emanate from it.
On the first day spent going through his things in the home they reached the same staircase which must
have informed the visions.

The two discovered pictures he had made on the backs of the storage boards of some of his vast comic
book collection. No one would have ever seen these but him. They didn’t even realize he must have liked
to make pictures. The pictures seemed like a journal, some altogether private space. The imagery was
widely varied yet revolved around one central subject. They both eventually agreed to display these
items, decorating the estate sale and separating from it. It was about all they could easily agree on in
relation to the estate.

What was left behind becomes us. What was collected, the impacts of behaviors. A spectral afterimage.

Michael Bussell chose Gengar, an iconic ghost Pokémon, to become his subject five years ago. He has
rendered Gengar hundreds of times since, deforming and reconfiguring the symbol in his exploratory
pictures and sculptures.

Gengar derives its name from the ‘doppelgänger,’ a ghostly double of a living person.
This aspect of Gengar is at the center of Bussell’s presentation at Cowpine Theater. Here Gengar is diffuse,
rendered with wavering edges and pink-to-purple colors that transmute like neochrome. In some pictures
he appears to us as a spectral cloud, in a state between forms. In pictures where he is more concrete, with
discrete edges, he occupies liminal spaces. He is seen posted on a ladder or shifting across a staircase -
transient zones that entail ascent or descent. Where is Gengar going and what forms will he acquire?

Exhibition text:

A hollow, plastic figure. Less than a ghost. It took the form of whatever it was cast upon. This shadow would watch from outside itself. Its eyes, in truth, saw nothing. Unfocused, they looked for how to make what they rested on turn into something else. A game. Something more trivial. Nowhere, all alone.

Control will tell the same lies, convincingly, forever. Nostalgia’s obsessed promise insists it can hurt the horrific confidence of fate’s unfolding.

The shadow smiles when its light frowns.

Plague Space presents eighteen select key issues and an unreleased figurine from the ongoing, unnamed (2020-) series by Baltimore, USA based artist Michael Bussell. After one month of being on view nine issues will be replaced with the next month’s and remain on view to the exhibition’s end. Bussell’s work explores the perspective of the fan artist, the artist for hire, the collector, the speculator, worth and contradictions.

Examples of an ongoing untitled drawing series, begun in 2020, in various exhibitions in Long Island City, Baltimore, Krasnodar, Brooklyn, Pripyat and in studio. 

Examples of an ongoing sculpture series on view in exhibitions in Seattle, Krasnodrar and Baltimore.

From aqnb:

Art among the trees, rubble + ruins for Michael Bussell’s A Table Walks Into a Bar in Wild Flower’s online only eerie forest

Located in the Maryland city’s Leakin Park, the Baltimore-based artist installed a series of ink on aluminum dibond and polyester-blend fabric works among the trees, rubble and ruins of an old Waterwheel, as well as the publication of an untitled, open edition book, with a segment: “A supportive surface goes to a spirit seller. My impulse is to watch an ever widening image of what appears to be. Things seeking what may be held on to before becoming some strange, new material.”

The ‘gallery’ space itself is located in the eerie forest where The Blair Witch Project and The Wire were both filmed, as well as a few other myths and tales to go along. Ghostly, the exhibition exists solely for online dissemination and documentation.

Michael Bussell’s A Table Walks into a Bar solo exhibition was on at Baltimore’s Wild Flower, running June 19 – September 17, 2017.

Examples of  UV cured ink on dibond printed digital photo collage works on view in exhibitions in Baltimore, New Jersey and in studio.

Examples of works utilizing photographic prints in combination with fabric.

Exhibition text: 

Deli Gallery is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition, Apartment Series, presenting three consecutive one-person exhibitions by artists Michael Bussell, Alexandria Tarver and Alex Chinh Nguyen. The first installment, In Time's Breeze, includes photographic works by Michael Bussell.

Meticulously obscuring and rendering his subjects, the artist creates a dialogue between the viewer and the final image. The image manipulations, both digital and physical, are performed over an extended period of time as the artist imbues the work with the experience of its creation. The photograph becomes a document of a space or an object as guided through the artist's hands.