The subject of Matthew Deleget’s current work is abstract painting – its historical framework, precedent strategies, exhibition conventions, and audience expectations. In his studio, Matthew takes on a pluralist approach and merges painting with conceptual, process, and installation strategies. He freely samples, remixes, and often subverts precedent abstract art movements, including suprematism, constructivism, plastic, concrete, minimalism, monochrome, pattern, op, neo-geo, radical and others reductive strategies. His work, however, absorbs, digests, and responds to what Matthew sees in his daily environment. This includes “urban culture, corporate government, news propaganda, unwinnable wars, religious fundamentalism, unconscionable materialism, and more”, remarks the artist:
“For my upcoming solo show “Ceremony” at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery in Miami, I plan to show a suite of new reductive paintings and site-sensitive installations examining the historical framework, precedent strategies, exhibition conventions, and audience expectations regarding abstract painting. My show will present primarily monochromatic works in black, white, and gold that characterize abstract painting’s current liminal state–somewhere between dead and alive–and will feature a wide array of repurposed materials, such as garbage bags, used bricks, sheet rock screws,and more.”
With “Ceremony,” Matthew continues his ongoing investigation into the embedded relationship between abstract painting and music. His first show at the gallery in 2010, Color Climate, included over a dozen randomly-generated color paintings, which were informed by the shuffle function on his iPod. Each painting was named after a member of the legendary ensemble salsa music band Fania All Stars, such as Hector Lavoe, Johnny Pacheco, and Celia Cruz, among others.
In the spring of this year, Matthew was one of two dozen artists included in the landmark exhibition Notations: The Cage Effect Today curated by Joachim Pissarro, Bibi Calderaro, and Julio Grinblatt at Hunter College Times Square Gallery in New York City. The exhibition marked the centennial of John Cage’s birth and examined his diverse and widespread influence on contemporary art throughout America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
In September, Matthew was named the Diane Marek Visiting Artist at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga where he mounted the solo exhibition “Pictures at an Exhibition” (on view through December 7). The title of the exhibition was inspired by the 1874 composition Pictures at an Exhibition written by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky penned his composition after seeing a retrospective exhibition of paintings by his late friend Viktor Hartmann in St. Petersburg, Russia. Interestingly, renowned abstract painter Josef Albers designed an album cover for Command Records’ recording of the composition released in 1961. The album hangs in Matthew’s apartment in Brooklyn.
Matthew Deleget, Please You, Appease You, 2012.
2 wooden panels hit with a hammer, 24 x 52 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Alejandra von Hartz Gallery.
In 2003, Matthew co-founded
MINUS SPACE, a platform for reductive art on the international level based in Brooklyn, NY. Since 2006, Matthew has curated more than 40 solo and group exhibitions at both MINUS SPACE’s gallery in Brooklyn, as well as other collaborating venues on the national and international levels. In March, he co-curated the exhibition MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca, which highlighted the work of 31 artists from 10 countries presented across 5 museums in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Matthew holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in Art and German from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN.
Matthew Deleget: Ceremony will run at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery in Miami through January 26th, 2013.
