Agape Charmani for Art-Sheep

Collage is one of the first and most basic artistic expressions one gets to experience. From an early age teachers ask kids to cut and glue together pictures, photographs and paintings to create an artwork called collage.

The process of making a collage vary from the theme to the materials used in the work. For years now the existence of new technology and computer programs assist many artists in creating their work, starting from editing a simple image to creating a virtual reality.

Many of these kids keep on “blending pieces” growing up and turn into imaginative collage artists. One of these cases was artist Michael Tunk who has been exploring and learning the world through creating since he was a kid. The Alameda-based artist creates illusionistic collages out of old magazine photographs and images, and old folklore illustrations.

For his latest work the artist worked basically with -or should we say on, cowboys. Erased forms that blend with the background consist the mysterious protagonists of Tunk’s collages. Influenced by the Wild West and its adventurous stories he re-contextualizes the found material into a new timeless universe. His transparent characters seem to be the silent martyrs of an artist who abruptly took their old lives and gave them new but nonexistent ones.

The lifeless heroes of Tunk’s collages are characters that balance on the very thin line between the real and the fictional. The visual presence they once had is here gone, giving them a fourth-dimensional essence and making these works look like an homage to the brave cowboys, gone from leading a dangerous life.

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