Michael Collins
b. 1954, Ireland
I feel the pictures of the series entitled Non Protagonists show modestly anonymous figures often part of and even inseparable from the urban realities the artist so often depicts. They are people but not portraits. Some seem to me to have iconological meaning for the artist, symbols of an outer and, indeed, inner reality that stay in the memory to confront us with indecipherable questioning. The choice of subject matter, the strong individuality of these figures, the transcending of mere skill in the exact but never photorealistic rendering of material reality, and the pairing away of the non-essential, all combine to bring about images rich in emotional weight. The purely and immediately temporal seems to serve this artist as a staring point in the exploration of the timeless.
– Angeles Vives, Barcelona 1993
(Text: EV+A 1998 – Circus ZZ)
Back to Artists