Michael Grasso is a Pennsylvania born artist (1995) currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Art at Parsons, the New School in New York, New York, and received a Bachelor’s in Fine Art from The Pennsylvania State University in 2017. Grasso organized a solo senior thesis exhibition in a moving truck in the spring of 2017. Additionally they have participated in several group exhibitions including the HumpDay Gallery, the Patterson Gallery, 25 East Gallery, and the Spidermother Series at 8 Ball Community. Their work has been featured in online gallery platforms and publications such as Slayer Mag, andHiss Mag.Grasso was the featured “Cover Star” for Valley Magazine in fall 2016. Grasso was the recipient of both the Kara D. Bergeren Award, and Outstanding Merit Award at the 2016, and 2017 undergraduate juried exhibitions at Penn State’s Zoller Gallery.

Michael Grasso is an artist investigating the historical signifiers of utopianism and how they manifest visually specifically in the town of Wildwood, New Jersey. They work to reimagine the island from how it presents itself as a utopia, into a queer paradise. Wildwood self-legislates to demand community wide participation in maintaining a framework of 1950’s architectural aesthetics, as a mode for continuing utopia. This pursuit produces a unique flamboyance amongst the tourist population and lore of the town.

Grasso is able to “paradise” Wildwood by imaging themself, and various locations throughout the island as exaggerated alternatives to their realities. Through an interdisciplinary practice of sewing, performance for the camera, drawing, and painting, they layer and saturate locations and characters, in order to imagine their queer possibilities.

The horizon is a source of infinite potential. When we look to the furthest point on the horizon, the tiny pixels we can make out have the potential to become anything as we move closer. Grasso embodies different characters which reference the lore of the town, and references them in their performances. This enables them to expand their psychogeographic understanding of Wildwood. These characters become conduits for future myth making. They get into drag as each figure, and nest them into specific locations “on island”. The references are playful yet esoteric. The First Generation Carter Family, a folk band, get paired with the Old Time Photo Booths on Wildwood’s Boardwalk. In another composition Debora Leeds, mother to the Jersey Devil, calls out in remorse, to her lost child who soars above the gentle surf of dawn.