Michael Morris, Boyopolis (2022)

Michael Morris
Boyopolis
edition of 200
Full colour, Soft cover, Metal coil bound
94 pages, 13 1/4" x 10 1/2"
As We Try & Sleep Press (2022)
Text by Dick Higgins
 
 
Forty years ago, following a devastating homophobic response to the artist’s affiliation to, and important contributions towards, the burgeoning art scene invested in exploring sexuality and gender, Michael Morris decided to take a break from Canada and sought refuge in Berlin. Over the course of his first few years in his new home, Michael enjoyed the freedom to sketch the nude male form. This artist book, Morris’s final project, includes nearly 100 images produced between 1982 and 1986 in his home studio, affectionately dubbed Boyopolis.
 
Those familiar with Morris’s work, in particular his non-representational paintings begun in the 1960s and his exploration of photography through staged mise-en-scène during the 1970s that featured nudes in the landscape with attention also redirected through the use of  mirrors, will connect the aesthetic and contemplative concerns the artist returned to over the course of his six-decades long career. A text by Dick Higgins, written in the 1980s, is reproduced here to offer some context to the work.
 
In hindsight, we can also note that these drawings, in their somber blue chalk pastel, with each model depicted on his own, alludes to the backdrop of the AIDS pandemic then in its first waves. Michael had noted that friends of his, artists from North America or elsewhere, having tested positive when no effective treatment was available, would come to Berlin to die. It was this reality, mixed with the presence of queer men living freely and openly in the city, that makes this publication a testament to Michael’s approach to living life as art.
 
- Kegan McFadden, Editor/Publisher of Boyopolis