Michael Huey (born September 21, 1964) is an American contemporary artist based in Vienna, Austria.[1][2] He often employs found photography and archival resources to create new photographic images, objects, installations, and videos.[3][4] His work has been shown in Vienna, Berlin, Rome, London, Lisbon, Sofia, Cleveland, and New York City, and written about in Art in America, Artforum, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker.[1][5][6]

Michael Huey
Artist Michael Huey in his Vienna studio
Born (1964-09-21) September 21, 1964 (age 60)
NationalityAmerican
EducationAmherst College, University of Vienna
Known forContemporary art, installations, video art

Background

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Huey was born in Traverse City, Michigan. He graduated from Amherst College in 1987 with a degree in German Studies. He has lived in Vienna since 1989, and received a master's degree in art history at the University of Vienna in 1999.[1] He is married to Viennese art historian Christian Witt-Dörring.[4]

Alongside his work as an artist, Huey has also published extensively, first as a staff member of The Christian Science Monitor, and more recently as a memoirist writing about his family's roots in Chicago and Leelanau County, Michigan. He is a regular contributor to the London-based magazine The World of Interiors and has written about art and design for exhibition catalogues, newspapers, and magazines in both Europe and the United States.[7]

Work

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Huey's artistic practice has been linked by critics to his interest in family history, archives, and inventories. The arts magazine EIKON has written that Huey's works "are like news that reaches us from the past and are kept as poetry in time."[8][9] According to Artforum magazine, "Huey's process defamiliarizes...objects to the extent that they become alien, worthy of scrutiny."[5]

The concepts of loss and legacy tie his works together over a wide range of media.[10] One of his techniques involves re-photographing and/or re-using existing photographs and papers. He also incorporates found objects into his exhibitions. Recent shows have involved installations of large-scale wall paintings or wallpapers Huey has designed.[11]

Images from Huey's "China Cupboard" series have been likened by The New Yorker to the work of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot.[6]

Individual works by Huey have been shown at the Kunsthalle Wien, the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.[3][12] In 2014 he joined the Secession, the Viennese artists’ association founded in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, among others.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Ward, Ossian (June 2010), "Out of the Past", Art in America, New York, NY, pp. 130–137, retrieved April 14, 2014
  2. ^ "Biography". www.michaelhuey.com. 28 November 2011. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
  3. ^ a b "Gift of Art by Amherst College Alumni Artists to Be Featured in 2013 Exhibition" (Press release). Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. May 24, 2012. Retrieved April 11, 2014.
  4. ^ a b Marcus, J.S. (July 12, 2012), "My Space: Michael Huey's Artful Home", The Wall Street Journal, retrieved April 14, 2014
  5. ^ a b Hall, Emily (April 2011), "Newman Popiashvili Gallery", Artforum, New York, NY, p. 219
  6. ^ a b "Goings On About Town: Art". www.newyorker.com. New York, NY: Condé Nast. February 14, 2011.
  7. ^ "Selected Published Magazine Articles and Interviews". www.michaelhuey.com. Retrieved April 12, 2014.
  8. ^ Faber, Monika (December 2008), "Nachrichten, die uns noch erreichen", EIKON, Vienna, Austria, pp. 14–15
  9. ^ "EIKON #64, Editorial", EIKON, Vienna, Austria, December 2008, retrieved April 14, 2014
  10. ^ Ledebur, Benedikt (2015). Bogner, Peter (ed.). Proof. Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation. pp. 27–37. ISBN 978-3-9503913-4-3.
  11. ^ "Esterhazy NOW". Retrieved February 8, 2022.
  12. ^ "Curator Conversation: The Last Days of Pompeii". www.clevelandart.org. Cleveland, Ohio: The Cleveland Museum of Art. March 5, 2013.
  13. ^ "Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession". secession.at/e.html. Archived from the original on May 29, 2014. Retrieved June 3, 2014.
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