about

Michael Alexander Pio Harper is an artist, art historian, and researcher/curator. He is particularly inspired by Italian Futurism and the historical avant-garde; Michael's work interrogates the legacies of these early 20th century artistic movements on art and our world today.

Founded in 1909 by Italian poet F. T. Marinetti, Futurism and its band of artists not only hoped to revolutionize art, but penetrate every aspect of culture and society. Futurist art expresses rapid movement through dynamic lines or force-lines, planes, and color, using elongation, curves, and repetition of forms to heighten the kinetic sensation. Futurism's unique visuality has been described as Futuro-Cubist, representing simultaneous spacial and temporal situations in states of flux.

Through the visual vocabulary of Futurism and theoretical underpinnings of other artistic movements from the early 20th century, Michael’s artistic work puts into question contemporary dialogues surrounding the mechanical and the organic, the past and the future. Futurism as the original avant-garde and with its complicated history with fascism makes the movement all the more important to reinvestigation and conversation by artists and art historians alike; we live in an age threatened with making the same mistakes as the past.

This futuristic bent to Michael's work often confronts a piece's own materiality or faktura. He finds inspiration in antiquarian objects, valuing materials like 18th century laid paper, old book bindings, and similar items as substrates. The Duchampian model of the found object is also an important aspect of his work, often incorporating materials like vintage cigar boxes, discarded matchbooks found in the street, and the likes. Oil paint, beeswax, canvas, linen and other traditional mediums are used in innovative ways. A whole host of polarities find their match in Michael's practice, creating works that appear atemporal and beyond periodization. These practices enable Michael to question Modernist legacies and consider trajectories from the past, to the present, and into the future.

Michael received his BA and MA in the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. His thesis, titled Force-Lines and Fault Lines: Paradoxes of Movement, Art Historiography, and Photography during Italian Futurism’s “Classical” Period (1909-1914), explored Futurist tensions with photography, art historiography, and 19th century scientific studies of animal locomotion.

The Futurists were first and foremost concerned with the expression of movement, a condition of the modern age; they believed the camera apparatus to operate opposed to the kinetic, freezing the subject from the ever-moving world, allocating it to the sphere of the past, and thus rendering a false depiction of reality. This went hand-in-hand with antiquarian sensibilities of the period; photographers looked to the classical and Renaissance past as a source of inspiration. While antithetical to Futurist theory, Futurists nonetheless looked to photography and to these art historical pasts for their own work and self-formalization. These paradoxes and self-contradictions in art history are what fascinate and inspire Michael most.

Beyond his art historical work and artistic practice, Michael has held positions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library & Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Johns Hopkins University’s Special Collections, The Evergreen Museum & Library, The Valerie J. Maynard Foundation, and currently at Arader Galleries NYC. Michael lives and works in New York, NY.

Exhibitions:

The Art Students League Printmaking Student Salon (March—April 2025)

Roosevelt Island Visual Arts Association (RIVAA) ‘The Road Ahead’ Exhibition (June 27th – July 14th, 2024)

Johns Hopkins University Visual Arts Department Student Exhibition (May 2022)