Pocket Pictures

Michael Genovese: Accidental Visions, Structured Seeing
Recent Work

Michael Genovese’s paintings emerge from accident rather than intention. Using unplanned photographs taken by his iPhone—often captured from inside his pocket without aiming—Genovese finds beauty in the overlooked. These images, archived and curated from digital debris, become the source material for new oil paintings. What begins as a glitch or error is transformed into something slow, tactile, and contemplative.

Painted on vintage Fredrix linen with historic oil pigments from the 1950s–70s, each piece is built through traditional glazing techniques. The results shimmer with varnished surfaces and a distinct material depth. The unprimed, stained edges of the linen are left exposed and partially painted, foregrounding the object’s physical presence and handmade quality.

Rather than using the camera to document or remember, Genovese lets it function without direction. This refusal of authorship reframes the camera as an object, not a tool—producing images that feel intimate, ambiguous, and bodily. Titles like Cazzotto (a clenched hand or shadowed void), Arepo (a scorched, lunar-like surface), or Philomena (evoking a distant planet) invite viewers to project their own interpretations. The paintings are modest in scale, inviting close reading and reflection.

This work represents a shift from Genovese’s earlier large-format abstractions based on glitch aesthetics. Here, the focus is inward—toward perception, surface, and the systems that shape our seeing. By translating digital error into oil and linen, Genovese creates a quiet space where chance becomes artifact, and looking becomes a layered act of care and attention.