About

Michael Sagato (b. 1976) earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts in 1999 in New York City. During that time he apprenticed with artists such as Tom Wesselmann, Marjorie Strider, and Kevin Barrett.

Sagato’s work has been exhibited in shows across the nation, including solo exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles contemporary galleries such as Joseph Nahmad, Jack Geary Gallery and De Re Gallery, and has earned him the Helen Wohlberg Lambert award and grant.

Sagato creates oil paintings on metal (aluminum). His images often depict a symbolic narrative to create a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through forms. Conceptually, his work is often making sweeping allegorical statements about the human condition in a quest for the self.

Having initially studied artists like William-Adolphe Bouguereau and John Singer Sargent for their technical use of paint, light and color, he later chose to veer in a new direction by abstracting and simplifying that approach. Sagato’s work is further inspired by artists like Egon Schiele, Willem de Kooning and Yayoi Kusama. His apprenticeship with Tom Wesselmann and Marjorie Strider has added an undeniable, underlying pop art aesthetic to his pieces while lacing his compositions with an editorial feel and reflections on contemporary issues.

Working on raw aluminum, there is no background or vanishing point. For Sagato, backgrounds have no information relating to the concept of the piece, consequently he chooses to leave them out, at times almost entirely, evoking a floating sensation on a reflective surface that is constantly changing in relationship to its environment. This change represents the city, and the world around him that is constantly in flux, and beckons the audience to look for themselves in the subject.

Today, Sagato resides in New York, where he paints in his studio on the Bowery focusing on new bodies of work that further endeavor into subjects of human condition and contemplations of issues surrounding cultural and individual identity in the contemporary moment.