Michael Ho

Michael Ho’s work involves producing negatives, or more accurately, making tableaux from stains. Paint is pushed through the back of an unprimed canvas in mostly abstract patterns which harden to an unabsorbent ground. Once the canvas is reversed, these forms act as a kind of stencil, occluding figures which the artist first renders digitally and then onto the front of the painting in oils applied by hand. Each work is thus partially a mirror image, imbued with the same-but-different quality which characterizes gay desire. Meanwhile, the abstract patterns resemble rustling leaves or writhing microorganisms, summoning the threat of contagion that has long hung over cruising sites while imagining queer new forms of life being born and bred there.