In her essay contribution to the publication, 'Troy Montes Michie: Rock of Eye', professor and theorist Tina Campt unpacks the form and politics of Montes Michie’s profound layering: “Michie describes his complex canvases as works that take assemblage as their point of departure, yet their complex layers blur the already porous boundaries between assemblage, collage, and more nuanced practices of camouflage. What collage and assemblage share is a juxtapositional gathering of images, objects, material, and forms. Michie bridges the two by integrating their intricate textures and interweaving multiple forms of media and of memory. These are palimpsests composed of layered meanings and compounding questions that shift, jostle, and juxtapose in relation to one another. They are conversations with and about the present as well as the past. They argue, tease, and flirt. They are dialogical contemplations of the erotics of these Black bodies in their originary as well as the contemporary moment. They are exchanges with and about the artist, his subjects, and those viewing and engaging them.” 'Rock of Eye' collects and presents Montes Michie’s collages and assemblages, but the exhibition, itself, is also a practice of juxtaposition, of layers. Montes Michie treats the gallery, its floors and walls, like his canvases. And when we enter, we not only negotiate these arrangements, we, too, are negotiated. We are part of the gathering of form and history, of the argument and of the tease. 'Troy Montes Michie: Rock of Eye' opens at CAMH on September 23. IMAGE: Montes Michie, ‘Untitled (Feeling Blue)’, 2020, collage, courtesy of the artist @troymmichie @followriversinstitute @caaminla @camhouston @sigliopress #troymontesmichie #followriversinstitute #caaminla #camhouston #sigliopress #tinacampt