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Micha Patiniott named a 2023-24
Fine Arts Work Center
Visual Arts Fellow
Patiniott was selected from a group of nearly 1,200 applicants for the prestigious 7-month residency that allows extraordinary emerging writers and artists from around the globe unrestricted time to create
Provincetown, MA (July 20, 2023) – The Fine Arts Work Center, renowned for its artist residency Fellowship program in the town that inspired generations of creative luminaries like Eugene O’Neill, Jackson Pollock, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, today named Micha Patiniott as one of its 2023 - 24 Visual Arts Fellow
The Fine Arts Work Center counts authors Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Cunningham, Jacqueline Woodson, Denis Johnson, and Ann Patchett; poets Louise Glück and Ada Limón; photographer Jack Pierson; filmmaker Jennie Livingston; and groundbreaking visual artists Jacolby Satterwhite and Tala Madani among its alumni. More than 1,000 fellows have passed through the program in its lifetime and have gone on to win, among other honors and awards, one Nobel Prize for Literature, two Poet Laureate appointments, four Pulitzer Prizes in fiction, four Pulitzer Prizes in poetry, four MacArthur Fellowships, and five National Book Awards.
The ten writers and ten visual artists in the 2023-24 cohort were selected from a pool of nearly 1,200 applicants worldwide for the 7-month residency program, a rare “no strings attached” fellowship that doesn’t require recipients to teach or work and allows them to focus solely on their own artistic creations. The residency includes housing, workspaces, and a monthly stipend valued at approximately $50,000 per fellowship. The Fellows are chosen through a rigorous, blind jury process that is focused solely on the merits of their work.
“We’re excited to welcome one of the most internationally diverse classes of new Fellows in our history,” said Fine Arts Work Center Executive Director Sharon Polli. “Our Fellowship program allows artists and writers uninterrupted time to focus on their work for seven months in a landscape that’s known for its beauty and solitude, giving them both the space to create and the support of a new group of visionary peers.”
Patiniott will travel to Provincetown from Amsterdam in October and live and work there through April 2024. The Work Center was founded in 1968 by a group of brilliant creatives, including painters Robert Motherwell and Jack Tworkov and poet Stanley Kunitz to provide artists and writers with a community where they could gather in the early stages of their development.
For more than half a century, the Work Center has remained true to its mission of granting artists time, space, and a group of supportive peers. Each generation of Fellows ideally moves on from the Work Center with a firm belief in their ability to pursue a life as a practicing artist or writer.
About The Fine Arts Work Center
The Fine Arts Work Center is an international home for artists and writers in Provincetown, Massachusetts — the country’s most enduring artists’ community. Founded in 1968 by a group of luminary creators including Stanley Kunitz, Robert Motherwell, Josephine and Salvatore Del Deo, and Hudson and Ione Walker, the Work Center has given artists and writers the space and time to pursue their work within a community of peers for more than half a century. The artist-led Work Center supports emerging artists and writers through its world-renowned Fellowship program, and also offers summer workshops and year-round virtual learning opportunities to advance creative practice. Fine Arts Work Center Fellows who have arrived in Provincetown as emerging writers have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, MacArthur Fellowships, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Visual Arts Fellows have presented their work at the Venice Biennale, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and at other venues around the globe. The Fine Arts Work Center supports artistic freedom, nurtures creative connections, and makes possible artistic achievements important to the larger culture.
About Micha Patiniott
Micha Patiniott creates minimalistic and atmospheric paintings of everyday objects and processes in flux, blurring the boundaries of the mundane and the cosmic. Familiar and intimate subjects, such as the blinking of a butterfly’s wings, the throbbing of private body parts, the curving of a mathematical object, and the turning of an ambiguous portrait, transform into sensuous otherness through painterly modifications. Patiniott embraces impermanence as a crucial element in experiencing the transcendent and sublime, reflecting the metamodernism concept of exploring ever-shifting perspectives of the self. He lives and works in Amsterdam, and holds an MA from the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam (2006-07). Solo and group exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; Anna Zorina Gallery, New York; PuntWG, Amsterdam; Cinnamon, Rotterdam; Heden, Den Haag; WHATSPACE, Tilburg; MKgalerie, Rotterdam; Galerie Sturm, Nuremberg; Dordrechts Museum; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam; and Museum Hilversum. Patiniott is a returning Fellow from 2008-2009
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About
The Butterfly Effect - “Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s mind?”
Micha Patiniott creates minimalistic and atmospheric paintings of everyday objects and processes in flux, blurring the boundaries of the mundane and the cosmic.
Familiar and intimate subjects, such as the blinking of a butterfly’s wings, the throbbing of intimate body parts, the curving of a mathematical object, and the turning of an ambiguous portrait, are transformed into sensuous otherness through painterly modifications.
Bodies and objects are in flux: things float and are in the midst of changing form, entirely absent, or in various states of becoming. Some elements are blurred to suggest a movement through time and abstraction, while others are sharply defined to mimic focused attention and stillness. The play of light is essential and alludes to a contemporary take on historical painting techniques like impressionism and sfumato. A restrained palette of mono or duo chrome colors is juxtaposed with a shifting of local colors to the psychedelic.
“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting gaily about. He knew nothing about Zhuangzi. Then suddenly he awoke and he was at once solidly and unmistakably himself, Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know whether he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Surely there’s a difference between Zhuangzi and a butterfly. This is what we call the transformation of things.” — 4th century BC, from the Zhuangzi, a Daoist text by master Zhuangzi
Micha Patiniott works and lives in Amsterdam.
He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in 2006 and 2007. Solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, PuntWG (Amsterdam), Cinnnamon (Rotterdam), Heden (Den Haag), WHATSPACE (Tilburg) MKgalerie (Rotterdam), Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg), and Anna Zorina gallery (New York). Group exhibitions include the Dordrechts Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Museum Provincetown (Massachusetts), Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam), Museum Hilversum, Provinciehuis Noord-Holland (Haarlem).
His work is included in private, public and museum collections within the Netherlands and internationally.
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