Mike Hansel

Mike Hansel is a fine art sculptor who uses welded sculptures as a means of pointing people away from what they take for granted toward an oddly humorous world composed of vaguely familiar elements. They are re-invented associations made between careful observations and the half-forgotten elements of memory.

Hansel says, “I attempt to distort traditional assumptions relating to function while also suggesting a conceptual relationship between life and industry. My primary method is to create industrial looking forms, which serve only aesthetic purposes. This contrasting relationship between hard and soft forms is the basic component of how I interpret things visually. Their interaction is, in one way or another the overriding concept in all of the objects I have made. Each piece, I think, tells a slightly different story. Some suggest a tranquil association between two very different components. Others allude to machines that can manipulate organic things and sometimes biomorphic forms start to take on mechanical characteristics. All of them attempt to illustrate the sense of irony that seems to exist when forms are separated from their function.”

Courtesy of Voltz Clarke Gallery