Atavistic Cuts: Digital Series

The reality – of course – is that we rely heavily on the digital. And yet, genetically, we’re almost identical to our predecessors of ten thousand years ago. Ancestors, who, limited by circumstance, were forced (perhaps permitted) to connect with the world in different ways, materially and also ‘spiritually’ (the word spiritually pertaining here to the intuitive practice of self-understanding).

 I sometimes wonder to what extent this digital occupation of our lives infringes on our ability to engage in spiritual practice. Through my art I think I try to find a route to this place of access, to take the past forwards through a process more akin to how our ancestors might have connected to making.  

Ancient carvings are among the oldest art forms we have well-preserved records of, and like all art, they contain stories. In the footsteps of this story-based carving tradition, primitive line-styles and personal narratives influence the prints I make. I’d like to clarify that I wasn’t drawn to this way of carving by academic ideas or some vague atavistic nostalgia, but because I could feel how using bold energetic lines liberated me from representational making, allowed me to involve myself in the physical process of making, and returned me to something that felt foundationally human, familiar, and scarcely visited.

I want the process of making to be intuitive, to demand my full attention, and presence. When carving I’m focused (you can’t undo a wrong cut) but equally seeking to forfeit control, to occupy a space where the carved blocks I produce contain some of the frenetic energy of life as I see it. Depending on the work in question the process can be physically demanding – try printing a series of 230cm linocuts by hand and you’ll know what I mean! – in itself this physicality can contribute to helping me access that immersion I’m looking for.

Perhaps this will seem contradictory, but while there are those who consider digital art to be in competition with physical art, I’ve rarely understood this to be the case. I feel that today, more than ever, there is a need for physical art, for the earthliness of intimately made things that aren’t experienced through screens or made by machines on mass. Digital art, by virtue of its limitations, highlights this need for physical art.

‘But-but-but you’re producing prints?’ You might say. That I am. One reason for me being drawn to block printing by hand is that while offering the kind of accessibility of reproduced images that pop-art introduced to the world, it does this in such a way that each print produced, due to how the hands work the page to force ink into it, have distinct subtle differences that make each image different. When digitally cataloguing the work for this show it was therefore essential for me to photograph every single print separately, even though the block used was the same, because each print has it’s unique traits, and in this way can be looked as a repeated image and its own unique piece.    

Each of the prints presented in this series is hand-printed by the artist off woodblocks or carved linoleum plates (the lino used is typically made from a mix of solidified linseed oil, pine resin and other binders including cork/sawdust and mineral fillers like calcium carbonate).

Micha Horgan is an Iranian-Irish multidisciplinary artist working with sculpture, painting, traditional block printing methods and storytelling.

 Micha grew up in London’s Hackney and was influenced by his inherited cultures, the rave scene, and by a strong sense of the conflict that exists between a modern and digitally socialised self, and the primordial or ‘ancient self’. His choice of mediums and line use often reflect this tension. His atavistic works often map his artistic journey, his interest with the human condition, ideas around play (as discussed in Caillois’ text Man, Games and Play) and influences which include absurdist writer Albert Camus, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat through to early Persian tableaux, Mesopotamian murals, and ancient Myth. 

His first solo exhibition, 'Curdled Bones’, showed at Hackney Gallery in 2023. He has exhibited work at Willesden Gallery, Lighthouse Gallery, and at shows in Soho and Peckham. His writing has won a WritingMagazine competition, and is published in TheTimes, Vice, SoftPunkMagazine and the EmberChasmReview. His piece on the Irish Civil War won a Green Curtain Theatre placement. In addition, Micha recently completed a funded placement at Faber&Faber’s prestigious Novel Writing Course.