My work is largely about the creation of meaning through exploration. In my
drawings, the interaction of seemingly man-made constructions with vast
rock-like formations functions not only as metaphor for the current struggle
to find a sense of home in our global society, but also proposes an
environment in which exploration, be it visual, physical, or intellectual,
is prioritized. Serving as a counterpoint to our image-saturated culture,
the bleak and expansive landscapes offer a quiet setting highlighted with
pockets of ambiguously functional industrial structures. It is through the
investigation of these meticulously and intuitively rendered imagined worlds
that meaning can be created by means of associations with our own society’s
desire to dominate and control both its environment and its individuals. My
interest in landscape revolves around the interaction in our society between
the necessary (natural resources, manufacturing, development, etc.) and the
discretionary (gated communities, fabricated nature, designated locations of
“beauty”, etc.). While our current culture attempts to hide the former and
showcase the latter, the worlds in my drawings aim to combine and confuse
the two. Traces of necessary human industry are at the same time
monumentalized and packaged as quaint, scenic suburban playgrounds. The goal
of this body of work is not to propagate any political message as to the
necessity of such industry, or its impact on the environment, but merely to
acknowledge our society’s prioritizing inclinations and offer up an
idiosyncratic and imaginary alternative.
Michael Schall,
2/20/06
"As synthetic, self-contained universes, Schall's drawings keep company with
an emerging class of notable contemporaries. Paul Noble, Robyn O'Neil, and
David Thorpe come to mind. In an artistic landscape that is still
preoccupied with notions of frontier and originality, this kind of
exploration is safely quarantined from such concerns. Schall's worlds, like
others in this realm, have the luxury of finding frontiers and describing
cosmologies within a self-defined dimension that is immune from
extra-worldly exigencies, and this along with Schall's individual
sensibility, makes his illogical world one worth visiting."
Shane McAdams, The Brooklyn Rail, Feb. 06.
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