KINK feature: Jose Michelsen
Untitled [No. 5] (high-quality prints available in the shop)
artist: Jose Michelsen
Bogotá, Colombia, USA
artist instagram
(images featured below will also appear in the KINK book. available in the shop now.)
Your work in five words or less?
The spirit through the body.
What’s your personal kinks?
Golden showers, gang bangs, fisting- but I haven’t tried any of them.
Turn-ons?
Painting freely what I really want and feel.
Turn-offs?
I hate the fact that the world functions around capitalism.
Favorite subject?
I love working with dancers because they have a very strong sense of corporality and theatricality- and they know how to improvise. That is very important for me because the results look much more natural and sincere.
Ideal place to display your work?
I would love to see my work hanging in big art galleries and museums. I make my art to fulfill myself though, and I don’t often think of it as something that people should be looking at.
Favorite non-art pastime?
I love hiking and camping out, because I connect with nature, I connect with my inner self, and I move my body in the way it was intended to be moved.
Most memorable project?
I have really enjoyed this new erotic series that I have been making. It has really sprouted out of me so effortlessly.
Art crush?
Right now, Doron Langberg because I love his use of color, and he seems to have a good life just working on his art.
Personal crayon color?
Cosmopolitan Pink. I can imagine a soft yet saturated hue of pink coming from cranberries in a cocktail mixed with bubbling soda. It’s so refreshing. So gay.
What is unique about your process?
Through a lot of constant work, I’ve begun connecting my spirit to my art, so I’ve been able to let go of a structured constructive practice, in representing the body, to project subconscious emotions through my art. I never really saw myself capable of that.
Why make art?
I make art because I feel an impulse, a need to capture and transform the things that I see and that generate strong emotions in me. Through art and other therapies, I’m turning the balance of my life towards a more spiritual, healing side and further away from the traditional capitalist life purpose that has been imposed on me by society.
What’s next?
I am working on a new series focused on the union between spirit and body- making it more transparent and ethereal without losing its carnality.
