Michael Staniak AUSTRALIAN, b. 1982

Michael Staniak’s work concerns the changing dynamics of images and materiality in light of the proliferation of digital culture. Grouped into the post-internet movement, Staniak’s process-oriented paintings explore the relationship between flatness and texture in digital images. To create his paintings, he builds up textural surfaces out of materials such as casting compound that he then sprays with acrylic paint, creating subtle gradients of texture color with minor stippling that evoke the effects of inkjet printers. The work oscillates between a sensation of a flat, screen-mediated image and the rich texture of an analog painting. For Staniak, the life of the painting both as object and image is crucial. “I consider the finished work as a moment in my practice; something to be considered and valued as an object that will ultimately end up as another picture entering the stream of the internet,” he has said.