GONZALEZ, Michael
Description
Composition with Y.B. and R. #33
1995
"wonder" brand english muffin bags, acrylic, fasteners
14 1/8 x 17 1/8 x 7/8 in
In 1980, Michael Gonzalez enrolled in the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) at the age of 26, when his artistic references stemmed from comic books and custom cars. Influenced by visual culture, his works critique the glossy aesthetics of optical art, minimalism, and geometric abstraction through everyday materials, in turn raising timely questions about consumption and discarded material culture. This
1990s series exemplifies that approach: Gonzalez manually deconstructs the Wonder brand’s brightly colored bread packaging and presses it in plexiglass to create provocative compositions. Throughout the Wonder series, the ubiquitous logo is rendered as a pattern. The depth, created not only by layers of plexiglass but also by Gonzalez's hypnotic play with dimension, appears to extend toward infinity. In one work, the Wonder logo plunges toward the bottom of the transparent canvas into a seemingly haphazard mess of colored circles, typography, and white rectangles, with the gallery wall occupying the negative space. In another, Wonder’s branding is reduced to a geometric abstraction, as Gonzalez takes advantage of the blue circles' ready-made transparency.
1990s series exemplifies that approach: Gonzalez manually deconstructs the Wonder brand’s brightly colored bread packaging and presses it in plexiglass to create provocative compositions. Throughout the Wonder series, the ubiquitous logo is rendered as a pattern. The depth, created not only by layers of plexiglass but also by Gonzalez's hypnotic play with dimension, appears to extend toward infinity. In one work, the Wonder logo plunges toward the bottom of the transparent canvas into a seemingly haphazard mess of colored circles, typography, and white rectangles, with the gallery wall occupying the negative space. In another, Wonder’s branding is reduced to a geometric abstraction, as Gonzalez takes advantage of the blue circles' ready-made transparency.
Date
1995
Creator
GONZALEZ, Michael
b. United States, 1953
b. United States, 1953
Source
Gift of Dean Valentine
Identifier
1999.115
Collection
Citation
GONZALEZ, Michaelb. United States, 1953, “GONZALEZ, Michael,” UCSB ADA Museum Omeka, accessed February 24, 2026, http://art-collections.museum.ucsb.edu/items/show/7587.