5 & 5 with Studios Alum Misha Kligman
Misha Kligman was born in Kazan, Soviet Union in 1978, and immigrated to US with his family as a refugee in 1995. He received his BA in Art from Cleveland State University (Cleveland, OH) in 2001 and MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Kansas in 2009. Kligman is a recipient of the 2015 Charlotte Street Visual Art Fellowship and completed a three-year residency at Studios INC (2017-2019), Kansas City. Kligman is a founding member of Plug Projects, where he served as a co-director from 2011 to 2016. Kligman lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri.
Studios Inc. Assistant Gallery Manager Jaede Bayala interviewed Kligman about his upcoming alumni exhibition at Studios Inc.
“The Stranger” Misha Kligman, Oil on linen, 2023
Q: Can you tell me about the work you plan to show at Studios Inc.?
A: It will include work from the last 15 years. What’s interesting about it for me is seeing this evolution of thinking over the years assembled in one place.
Q: What has been inspiring these pieces?
A: Figure in landscape has been a long-running theme in my work. My work began by examining history and historical narratives. Then I moved away from it very purposefully. Now I am reexamining it. My autobiography is still at play somehow thematically in it as well.
Q: Many of your works feature landscapes and other natural elements. Are you influenced by the Kansas City landscape?
A: It's a changing notion of landscape in my work. It's never direct like a plein air painting, for example. At times landscape for me functions as a historical maker or place associated with particular histories. Other times I’ve referenced the landscape as a manifestation of a kind of mystical force.
Q: How do you decide on a color palette for your paintings?
A: I happen to like color very much, I am really interested in it. I am a muddy painter, working with a sort of contaminated or sick color. And now I’m painting with too much color it seems. I am interested in color being another destabilizing force in painting.
Q: Do you see your pieces as individual objects or contributing to a larger narrative?
A: I try not to make one-off work. I don’t work in that way because I don’t have a signature style. I’m very allergic to style because it aligns more with work as a merchandise, and it can easily commodify painting. Bodies of work I’ve made sometimes have visual or conceptual continuity and sometimes they do not. Most often they go against one another: one body of work contradicts another in some way.
