Michael Petry was born in El Paso, Texas in 1960 and received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematical science and fine art from Rice University, Houston, Texas in 1981.With the option of attending graduate school at Harvard's Kennedy School of Public Policy or venturing abroad, Petry chose a one-year hiatus in London. The sojourn eventually turned into an extremely successful 21-year career as a multimedia artist, writer and curator. Petry's visual work focuses on installation art practice – a kind of art that rejects concentration on one object in favor of a consideration of the relationship between things and their contexts. The medium has a broad parentage that extends from Duchamp's readymades, through the 1960s incarnations of Kienholz, Oldenburg, Kaprow and Dine to more recent developments such as process art. Like these other artists, Petry crosses different disciplines in order to question their autonomy and their historical relevance to a contemporary context. Usually heroic in scale and sometimes witty and subversive, Petry's installation works are usually impermanent – relics, souvenirs and photographic documentation are their only remnants. Major themes in Petry's work include the evolution and introspection of the individual, particularly how those concepts apply to the homosexual male. His overt interest in the male physical form is a metaphor for the spiritual. Through the microcosm, he attempts to reach the macrocosm. Petry explores science and art, the interchange between the two and how that interchange has been perceived. He is also interested in challenging notions of beauty. In a 1997 article published in Art & Design magazine titled "A Thing of Beauty is. . .", Petry wrote, "Would I see ugliness and think beauty, how would I know what was ugly or if there was an ugly, or if there was a beauty, perhaps in the light I would know there was only trueness to form, and that this was the beautiful moment." In his newest works, Petry uses delicate pearls, lovingly sewn onto velvet in designs that mimic constellations. Their luster and shimmer reveal to the viewer the beauty in art. It is soon revealed, however, that the compositions are based on patterns made by ejaculate. In this, one is exposed to the delicate balance between what is considered beautiful and what is considered grotesque. Petry's work also includes performance art, music and painting. His performance piece Uncle Mikey Fine Art Game Show, was performed at the 1993 Venice Biennale. He also performed an opera titled An Englishman, an Irishman, and a Frenchman (based on the lives of W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Cocteau) at the National Gallery in Bonn in 1998. More recent installation works have included materials ranging from soil and sand to painted clothes and paper jewelry, and each installation is typically accompanied by music composed specifically for the subject. A London resident since 1981, Petry founded the Media Arts group in 1982, and in 1989 he was part of an artists' collaborative responsible for the Unit 7 Gallery, an endeavor devoted to installation art. Petry is currently co-director of the Museum of Installation, which he co-founded in 1990, and in 1994 he co-authored the book Installation Art, which was published by Thames and Hudson. In 1996, he founded the Museum of Contemporary Art, London and curated its opening show Abstract Eroticism in both book and exhibition form. He received his Master of Arts degree with distinction from London's Guildhall University in 1999.
Collection Highlights
Petry's works are included in prominent public collections throughout the world including the British Museum, London; the American Craft Museum, New York; the Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublick Deutschland, Bonn and the Bellerive Museum, Zurich.