Michael Dweck - BLUNDERBUST

From April 11 to June 1, 2024, Heather Gaudio Fine Art presented MICHAEL DWECK: BLUNDERBUST. While Heather Gaudio Fine Art is renowned for discovering emerging artists, Michael Dweck has already attained superstar status in the art world. To understand Dweck is to delve into the mind of a true artist, consumed by a passion for his craft and devoted to his distinctive expression.

“When I was 7, my parents gave me my first camera as a gift at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, igniting a lifelong passion for visual art. It became a gateway to the world—a tool not only for exploration and understanding but also for profound connection. Throughout my journey, I spent years making portraits, often of friends at the beach. It taught me to see the beauty in the mundane and uncover significance in the overlooked," Dweck recalls. "My dedication to artistic expression has only deepened since.”

I originally pursued architecture at Pratt Institute with the goal of becoming an architect. During my freshman year, I collaborated on a final project where we designed a house that resembled Colonel Sanders' head from KFC, complete with a drumstick-shaped bus stop in front of it. Phillip Johnson, a visiting architect, critiqued my work and found it too whimsical. I explained that my design was intended as a critique of conventional architecture, citing his new Sony building in New York as an example. Unfortunately, this upset Johnson. Feeling that the architecture school didn't align with my thinking, I shifted my focus to fine arts and graphic design.”

In 2003, Dweck gained recognition with ‘The End: Montauk, N.Y.,’ marking his first major series of work. The photographic series portrayed an idyllic portrait of the renowned Long Island, NY, fishing community, providing an idealized glimpse into the lives of its beautiful denizens who immersed themselves in the surfing subculture. “In my work, I’m interested in depicting the beauty and intricacy of human life, while exploring ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation within endangered societal enclaves,” Dweck explains. “Montauk, to me, was an evocation of a real-world paradise lost: the paradise of summer, youth, and erotic possibility. The body of work is a portrait of a place in time and a way of life at once fading and being reinvented with each new season, a place that was important to me growing up.”

“That year, everything changed for me," Dweck reminisces. "Sotheby’s in New York hosted a solo exhibition of 65 photographs from that Montauk collection, and I secured gallery representation both in the U.S. and abroad.” Many images from that series became iconic.

In 2004, Abrams published 'The End: Montauk, N.Y.,' a book that introduced a format blending elements of a photographic novel with the cinematic experience, a concept developed by Dweck. The book showcased Dweck's works documenting the fading beach life of Montauk amidst increasing gentrification, which The New York Times hailed as "The ultimate homage to the sun-kissed surfing life." It quickly became the fastest-selling art book in Abrams’ history, selling out within two weeks. Additionally, a photograph from that series titled ‘Sonya, Poles’ was featured in a prestigious group exhibition at the Louvre Museum showcasing major photographic works from that year.

Dweck’s subsequent project, ‘Mermaids’, delved into the lives of women on Aripeka Island, Florida, who were part of an enchanting underwater community. “Not only were these women known for their ability to hold their breath for extended periods, akin to mermaids, but they also lived in the freshwater springs of the island. There, I photographed the Mermaids underwater at night, with my film camera inside a thick-walled plexiglass box, suspending a high-powered light high above the limestone riverbank. To me, the allure of these beautiful figures was made more compelling by their elusiveness, their remoteness, as if abstracted by the medium of water and immersed in a realm beyond solid ground, much like a dream.”

Turning his lens to Havana, Cuba, Dweck delved into the lives of a privileged community of artists thriving within a seemingly classless society, highlighting contrasts and contradictions. There he befriended Alejandro Castro, one of Fidel Castro’s sons who was also a photographer. Dweck’s exhibition, ‘Habana Libre’, marked the first time a living American artist's body of work was shown in a solo exhibition in a Cuban museum in post-Revolution Cuba.

Beyond photography, Dweck has also gained international acclaim as a filmmaker, directing and producing award-winning documentaries that immerse audiences in a deep sense of visual ecstasy, revealing details of worlds often overlooked.

Dweck’s ‘The Truffle Hunters’ took a deep dive into the lives of the small community of Northern Italian elders who guide their canines to find the world’s most sought after ingredient, the white Alba truffle. The film debuted at Sundance in 2020 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Oscars. His third film ‘Gaucho Gaucho,’ a documentary about an ensemble of iconic gauchos living beyond the boundaries of the modern world, was a hit at Sundance 2024. “By weaving emotional and visually evocative narratives, my aim with cinema is to immerse the audience in the beauty, wonder, and joy I encounter within these communities,” Dweck explains.

Surprisingly, amidst his artistic pursuits, Dweck maintains a fervent passion for short-oval stock car racing. "Raised on Long Island, I grew up near a racetrack where I would go with my dad and brothers every Wednesday and Saturday night," Dweck recalls fondly. "The images of Wink Herold or Jerry "Red" Klaus scraping off the walls in turns two and four left its own scratches and paint on my childhood."

He lights up when he describes how, “The drivers were my heroes. Local mechanics and hobbyists - the cars were their weapons, sculptures, flags and family crests rolled into one. Each car, a canvas of history and character, forged from salvaged parts, like treasure hunters in junk yards. Relics of another era, a time when cars were constructed with nuts, bolts, and welding torches, not silicon and plastic. The dents on their freshly painted fifty- to sixty-year-old panels and the scars on their bodies are the hieroglyphics that reveal their past. The racetrack made me feel stimulated. It was the vocabulary of color, sound, texture, movement, form, and materials that got me excited. At one time, there were around three dozen racetracks on Long Island alone," Dweck reflects. "Now, only one remains, in Riverhead.”

Dweck began photographing the Blunderbust cars at Riverhead on weekends from 2007 to 2013 as a way to reconnect with this simpler past – both his and Long Island’s: Dweck describes the smell of burnt rubber and clutches; the heat radiating off the cars as they drove through concession areas blocked off by sawhorses on their way back to the pits; the sight – sometimes seen by Dweck from a hole in the fence when he'd go without his father – “…of railroad ties rammed loose and lodge like spears in wheel wells and protruding like lances as car circled the tar track, sparks flying. Dweck reflects.

“These cars, people, and this place were in a slow decline. This idiosyncratic pastime—racing heavy, stock American sedans on a small, precarious track—stands apart from the broader industrial world.” Dweck continues, “The racetrack served not only as my subject and studio but also as a metaphor for a global cultural phenomenon: the erasure of concrete identity, the collapse of community institutions, and the decay of handmade objects that will eventually become relics in a void.”

Dweck’s connection with racing transcended photography, becoming the subject of his first film 'The Last Race', which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and was distributed by Magnolia Pictures. “It’s a story of a small-town American racetrack fighting for survival when land-hungry corporations come to town,” Dweck explains.

Now, Dweck is debuting his first exhibition of paintings, 'BLUNDERBUST'. The elements of these compositions were partially inspired by what Dweck terms ‘beautiful accidents,’ the dynamic and random collisions of 1970’s race cars, their high-speed impact tearing at each other's hand-painted sheet metal skin. Dweck describes how the race cars have been meticulously hand-painted every week for the past 60 years, accumulating hundreds of layers of paint—applied with house paint, spray paint, brushed on, rolled on, sprayed on—adorned with local "sponsors," girlfriends' names, nicknames, and numbers. “Each week, a fresh coat of paint conceals the scrapes and dents from the previous week. Every scratch is like a scar, a wrinkle, a laughter line – evidence of a life well lived. With each new race, fragments of old layers are uncovered, revealing stories while new layers cover them anew.” Dweck explains, “this mechanical, aggressive act served as a catalyst for the spontaneous creation within the Blunderbust paintings.

About Blunderbust Dweck explains, “I began these works in 2022, creating abstract paintings that liberated me to explore the realm of randomness, which I had previously denied myself with photography. The interplay of arbitrary choices and chance, play a significant part of these works. For me, painting is like going to work, like being a mechanic. The physicality of the mechanics, welders, and race drivers brought into the language of abstract painting - is extremely powerful. I want to transform the raw energy of the track, that place of wonder, into art that can then be shared with the world. People say that we’re all seeking a meaning to life. What we are really seeking is the experience of being alive. That’s what these paintings represent.”

When asked about why he creates art in various forms such as painting, photography, film and sculpture, Dweck replied, "The reason I started creating art was because there was something inside of me that I felt, if I could manifest it in some way, I would understand more about myself and how I coexist with the rest of society.”

“We are thrilled to be exhibiting Dweck's first foray into painting at the gallery. We have worked with him and represented his photography since we first opened the gallery thirteen years ago, and witnessing his artistic expansion into a new medium has been as exciting and evocative as the paintings themselves,” Heather Gaudio shares.  “Michael is a gifted artist who opens windows and visions to worlds with a unique eye and perspective. These paintings serve as a vivid portal into Michael Dweck's world of cars and racing The artist skillfully captures the intense action and passion of the racetrack using a blend of paint and race-related materials, creating an immersive experience of motion and energy. There's a palpable authenticity to Dweck's process-driven approach in the Blunderbust paintings, delivering an exhilarating, genuine, and thought-provoking experience. This exhibition will surely satisfy art and car aficionados alike.”