Michael Dispensa

The Skirt

Ortega y Gasset Projects is pleased to present Ideals on Wheels, a site-specific solo installation in The Skirt by artist Michael Dispensa.

Ideals on Wheels is composed of sculptural and video objects, depicting transformed infrastructure from the New York City subway system. Made in faithful resemblance to their real counterparts, these sculptures express the uncanny double experience of both what the subway promises, and how it actually is.

Formerly three separate and privately owned railways, the NYC subway was incorporated as a public system by the city in the mid-1900s. The visual language of the 1970s R46-era subway cars, still in use today, reflects this ethos of municipal pride: NY City and State seals checker the train car walls, and faux wood paneling and colorful orange seats lend a bright and welcome feel.

Dispensa takes these iconic symbols of state effort and morphs them to reflect the reality of the subway: a look under the hood, so to speak. Through a series of casting disruptions, city and state seals bend, warp, and discolor. Wild roses–the New York State flower–proliferate, in place of the oft used generic European rose, and the iconic speckled terrazzo subway flooring becomes an ever-spreading starfield. The subway brake pulleys with their tempting red handles morph into muli-handled absurdities.

Ideals on Wheels calls for you to “see something, see something, see something,” a reinterpretation of the paranoid “See something, Say Something” slogan, into a call to presence. The installation proposes the evolution of top-down propaganda proclaiming collective city and state enthusiasm, to the more alive experience of witnessing what actually is.

Michael Dispensa (b. 1993 Queens NY), is a multimedia artist and educator working in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from The School of Visual Arts in 2016 with a BFA in illustration and received an MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2021. His work has been most recently included in group shows at Asya Geisberg Gallery, The RISD Museum, Stephen Street gallery, and Soloway Gallery. He currently works as an artist Instructor with Studio in a School, Ashcan Studio of Art, and Queens Public Library.