THE HAPPY GAMES, 52.2 x 393.7 inches, lycra, additional paraphanalia

Micha Eden Erdész (°1975, Toronto) is a British, Canadian, and Israeli contemporary Intermedia artist, curator and artistic researcher living on the Suffolk / Essex border, England




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Guided by a desire to ambiguously traverse between interior and exterior worlds through the interaction of diverse media, Erdész engages with Intermedia as a kind of sensory technology to suggest a subaltern layer of knowledge human, animal or neither. Erdész’s formative influences are those of suburban Toronto of the 1980’s, particularly the carpeted basement of a Downsview split-level house with a blue door, a redundant home bar partially stocked by random liquors and beverages adorned the edge of this nether-land, fairground attractions; the Darkride, gravity rides, vertical rides, dodgems, hauntings and fun houses imagined within the shopping mall. A singular drum symbol remained in the same spot on the floor and behind the bottom of the stairs, the massive weight of an underfloor safe’s door remained always open and always empty. Tending towards human portrayals of the supernatural in folklore, fairgrounds and horror films, descriptions of consciousness, mutability and disappearance infect his work. Eschewing the structural clarity of the artist’s architectural and philosophical training in favour of more ephemeral, ghost-like evocations, fictions are emphasised over physical viability. Among works in oil on rosin and mirror-glass, textiles, chrome and video, some pieces involve the dextrous working of oil paint and fine drawings onto synthetic transparencies.

Micha curated major exhibitions including ‘The Liminal Phase’ in 2006, in 13, 000 sq feet of commercial space in Holloway, London as part of an urban regeneration programme culminating in his own work public work entitled ‘New_Lon – so near far’ (2011). This intervention referenced both residents’ impression of the stadium living on its edge condition and film stills from Inuit Canadian filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s ‘Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner’ (Canada, 2001). Erdész revived the fictive anchorite persona of his former residency at the Florence Trust in London (2005-6) returning to St Saviour’s in 2015 with a solo show. ‘Hearth and Heat’ re-read Hampstead Heath – a revered parkland in north London - as a trove of psychic experience. In 2019, he brought ‘New Magical Realism’ to the The Minories, Colchester, including Dutch, Belgian, German, and Scottish painters, sculptors and installation artists with support from University Centre Colchester and the Landeshauptstadt München, Germany. He has since exhibited in Munich with Angela Stauber in ‘Joy and Disappointment’ (2021), supported by the Erwin und Gisela von Steiner-Stiftung, and is currently developing a public project for High Chelmer Shopping Centre in Chelmsford, UK entitled ‘Inland Flood’. (2021-)

Selected works -