I don’t
know about you but I’ve been kissing these walls for want of lips to
kiss in this new normal limit to intimacy unbound.

Thirty
two works, thirty two pages. The installation is a book. The
exhibition is a publication. The publication is entitled Kiss
Emitting
Die Odes.
Take the corners of four rooms for booky spines
and
the sixteen walls for thirty two pages. Enter. Open. Exhibit.
Publish. Exit. Close.

While
the transmutation of language is particularly important to Dean’s
practice, his works are not intended to be read as words, but rather
to be identified as an element of language in their own form and
imagined as a word or idea. He attributes a physical form to a
personally developed language, based on a series of typographic
alphabets, which he designs himself.

Although
sculpture is one of the central media of the Artist, language and
text form the basis of his individual works and sometimes of entire
exhibitions. Using language as a fragment and an act, similar to an
act of speech, which is not only a statement, but also an action,
Michael Dean translates text fragments and typographies into physical
experiences.

Michael
Dean
(b. 1977, Newcastle Upon Tyne, U.K.) lives and works in London. He
graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2001 with a BA
Fine Art (Studio Practice and Contemporary Critical Theory). Dean’s
work begins with his own writing, abstracting text into sculptures
and immersive installations that explore language, the body, and
intimacy.

In
2021, Dean will have a solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery in NYC
and Mendes Wood in São Paulo. Recent solo exhibitions include: Tu
Texto Aquí,
Museo Tamayo, Mexico City;
Having You On ,
BALTIC
Centre
for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom, Teaxths
and
Angeruage,
Portikus, Frankfurt, 2017,
Sic Glyphs,
South London
Gallery,
London, 2016, Lost
True Leaves,
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, 2016. In 2017, Dean participated in
Skulptur Projekt Münster, and in 2016, was shortlisted for the
Turner Prize.

Additionally,
Dean’s work has been included in institutional group exhibitions
such as Scrivere
Disegnando/When Language Seeks Its
Other,
CAC, Geneva (2020) The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture 2018, The
Hepworth
Wakefield, Wakefield (2018); Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017, Münster
(2017); Turner Prize, Tate Britain, London (2016); Sculptures
Also Die,
Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina,
Florence,
(2015); Mirror
City,
Hayward Gallery London, London (2014); A
History of Inspiration,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2013).