Décollage/Collage (Solo Show) Haight Street Art Walk: Saturday, 8/22/26, 6pm-8pm with a live soul revue performance by This Train Don't Stop Location: Her Urban Herbs, 629A Haight Street, San Francisco, CA 94117 ARTIST STATEMENT: Mike Gabriel is a San Francisco-based artist/graphic designer drawn to print detritus and the discarded by-products of popular culture. Working primarily with repurposed wheat-pasted billboards and posters, he combines techniques of collage, décollage, and assemblage to invite a reconsideration of the organic strangeness of the distressed, weathered, and discarded. Decomposing by the elements or torn by passersby, the stratified layers of pulp reveal myriad, unpredictable combinations of imagery, colors, and type, exposing an under-recognized poetry of the metropolis. Mike Gabriel has designed record LPs, CDs, and inserts for Universal/Capitol, Sub Pop, Alternative Tentacles, Get Hip, Yep Roc, Ako-Lite, and Sympathy for the Record Industry, working with artists such as Boss Hog, Chuck Prophet, Kelley Stoltz, Andre Williams, and the Jim Jones All Stars. Since 1999, he has been employed by advertising agencies such as BBDO; Duncan-Channon; and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; creating print and online ads for clients such as Chevrolet, Intel, AT&T, Dickies, McDonald’s, and Stanford Children’s Hospital. As lyricist/singer/thereminst with garage-punk band, The Sermon (Alternative Tentacles), songs he wrote were featured in commercials by Levi’s and Indian Motorcycles, and included in Jonathan Demme’s “Power of Rock” exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Between 1996 and 1999, Gabriel recorded and toured nationally with the Pittsburgh-based garage band, The Mount McKinleys (Get Hip Recordings). Gabriel has exhibited artwork in group and solo shows in the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Pacifica, and Point Reyes Station), and further afield in galleries in Pittsburgh, PA; Norfolk, VA; Traverse City, MI; Elmira, NY; Baton Rogue, LA; and Laguna Beach, CA. Raised in Pennsylvania, Gabriel received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University where he also completed an Honors Thesis in Filmmaking. Before moving to San Francisco in 1999, he was active in independent filmmaking, serving as director, assistant director, writer, and cinematographer on several film projects. He was employed as a film projectionist for Pittsburgh Filmmakers and in 1994, represented a low-budget feature film that he shot and co-wrote at the Cannes Film Festival. Largely self-taught as a visual artist, he draws inspiration from the Nouveau Réalisme Movement, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bruce Conner.