About the Artist
Marat Paransky is a sculptor, painter, photographer and mixed-media artist. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine in 1986, his family settled in Mero Detroit in 1997. He received an MFA in Visual Arts from the Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Paransky has Bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and political science. His art has been exhibited throughout Michigan, Boston, San Francisco, Fayetteville, AR, and Windsor, Ontario.
Marat’s work generally falls under the umbrellas of themed projects. One project looks at chance and found objects/images. It takes the form of collage and assemblage, and there is often the inclusion of parts from Marat’s older artworks. Another body of works focuses on the nuclear power/weapons industry. It combines his interest and research into the nuclear disasters, as well as its ties to his early childhood in Ukraine.
Marat Paransky lives in Farmington Hills, MI with his wife, two children and two Siberian Huskies.
About the Show
Years ago, I used to joke that if my art career did not work out, I would become a garbageman. Oddly enough, today I find myself somewhere between the worlds of art and refuse. This project, Ripe for Decay, is driven by an interest in the discarded, temporary and overlooked. It is a deep dive into those interesting-looking chance objects, designs and materials that pass through our hands on a daily basis, unnoticed. Along with these found objects and images, the raw materials for this group of works are my older artworks, my studio waste (leftover paints and glues) and other people’s studio waste—the dead ends of art production.
The above elements are mixed and remixed into new works in several cycles. Some of the resulting collages and assemblages may go through three to five iterations, each one several years apart. Certain works will have no foreseeable end point, while others are disassembled and the parts reused. I find that I prefer mutating the artworks on a continuous basis and exploring what happens when there is no defined end goal and no “official version”.
Ripe for Decay draws inspiration from the absurdity and chance encounters of Dada, as well as the sampling and experimentation of Industrial music.