A change of scene, with no regrets,
A chance to watch, admire the distance,
Still occupied, though you forget.
Different colours, different shades,
Over each mistakes were made."
- new dawn fades, (here)
LINE BREAKS, an exhibition of new works by Matt Connors.
The exhibition continues through 22 October VW (VeneKlasen/Werner), Berlin.
In art, frottage "to rub" is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production developed by Max Ernst. The artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface." I've been lucky to capture Matt Connor's work here in Los Angeles. His latest shows are in Berlin, and they gain momentum in size and voided space. If rooms could be paintings, I'd like to live in works like this, listening to old records, the occasional scratch, the shadows from a passing car on the ceiling, the long quiet stretch of the night....
For those in Berlin, visit "line breaks" before it closes at VW - David John
Matt Connors "believes in the potential for invention and renewed meaning in abstract painting. His practice embraces abstraction as a poetic language, disregarding the end-game discussion that surrounds much of contemporary painting in favor of an open-ended investigation into image making. Valuing the pleasure of non-verbal, contemplative looking over conceptual gamesmanship, unabashedly borrowing from a range of sources and art historical precedents, including mid-century American painting, typographic design and the formal structures of modern poetry, Connors reinterprets and extends the late-modernist narrative."
"Connors’s technique is often decidedly hands-off, relying as much on willful mark making as it does on the incidents and accidents of studio practice - the "marks of making". While his creative process appears coolly cerebral, employing scant virtuosity or painterly finesse in any traditional sense, the paintings are neither cold nor ironic. His combined use of frottage, staining, overpainting and drawing creates an expressive space devoid of common, painterly gestures or brushwork. The result is an earnest yet subtle emotional intensity." (text taken from here)
----------------------