Michael Ottersen

July 29, 2013, 8:30am

Navigating The Mentholated Roads: Michael Ottersen at SEASON

There is something deceivingly friendly about Michael Ottersen’s paintings. The Seattle artist’s dense canvases pop with solid, inviting hues. As pointed out by Robert Yoder, artist and owner of SEASON, where Ottersen’s show The (Mentholated) Roads Around Naples is on view, most of the canvas-spanning forms can be contorted into geometric faces. But then, there are the titles, which counter the initial straightforwardness with an esoteric sense of humor that reads as equal parts inside joke and non sequitur wordplays—Stinky Pinky/Wigwamery and Mary Krishna stand out among the more confounding. This tug of war happens within each of the works, sucking you in at the first encounter and remaining stuck in your head long after. – Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor