Art Corner: Michael O’Guinn | COALESCE

Back in April, Raandoom featured Michael O’Guinn in a conversation shaped by expressionism, punk energy, and the idea of painting the way some people play music — in fast, impulsive bursts. That rhythm extended into a belief that texture can carry what language often leaves behind, offering an early trace of the emotional force that now defines COALESCE.

Artwork © Michael O’Guinn. Courtesy of the artist.

Now on view in Santa Barbara, the exhibition folds those same instincts into something heavier, more fractured, more deliberate. The works carry the weight of rupture — socially, emotionally, visually — and still manage to reach for coherence, even if only momentarily. Some canvases feel like blueprints torn mid-draft. Others suggest structures beginning to erode. All of them exist inside a tension that never settles.

The term O’Guinn uses — brutal fragility — stays with you. Metal meets linen, precision breaks into stain, clean zones give way to drips that seem to fall too far. He lets punk and grunge bleed into the surfaces without citing them directly. There’s a sound to this work, even in silence. You feel it in the rhythm of the strokes, the smudged geometry, the unresolved grid.

“It might be a time to get mad and say, ‘Fuck you. We can do better.’”

That energy hums underneath the compositions, but there’s no manifesto. Just accumulation. Texture. Pressure. A quiet urgency built through layers.

Some pieces evoke civic decay — rust tones, cracked edges, a kind of infrastructural ache. Others lean soft: bleached pinks, quiet greens, moments where the canvas seems to exhale. The show holds both. Nothing here chooses one mood. Instead, it pulses between forces — control and collapse, exposure and restraint, fracture and coalescence.

“Those raw moments put onto canvas are symbolic of being able to really see each others’ experience and connect with something on a human level. Something we need right now.”

The work doesn’t ask for interpretation. It asks you to stay with it — to feel the surface shift, to watch balance fail, to notice how the pieces still hold.

COALESCE is on view in Santa Barbara through July.
See more of Michael’s work via Instagram @moguinn.

Artwork © Michael O’Guinn. Courtesy of the artist.