Michael Dean
b. 1977, United Kingdom
Born 1977, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK; lives and works in London, UK
Dean grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, in England’s industrial north. His urban upbringing deeply informs his work, as evidenced in his use of concrete, caution tape, coke cans, and other relics of the street. Nature may at first seem opposite to these materials, yet it is a theme the artist has returned to throughout his career, most recently in his 2021 exhibition in Seoul, Garden of Delete. Dean’s Ilford studio opens onto a large back garden in which sculptures and fragments rest among weeds and wildflowers, gently surrendering to the untamed vegetation and forming manmade (and man-touched) geological layers. Similarly, the surfaces of the concrete sculptures in the present exhibition evoke calcium deposits or moraines, as if they have fallen off a cliff-face. Dean values nature for its ‘phenomenological fatherless’ – its place at the origin of all things, and its ‘hyper- author’ potential for growth in every direction. While he ascribes resilience and power to his subject, the artist also draws attention to its imminent danger and looming disappearance. In discussing his latest output, Dean quotes a colleague who recently told him: ‘If your work doesn’t have reference to global warming, then it’s science fiction.’