Alyssa Matthews “Kiss Me You Fool”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

poster for Alyssa Matthews “Kiss Me You Fool”

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In De Kooning: An American Master, authors Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan illustrate how Ruth Kligman radiated a “kiss me you fool” air of mystique among the downtown abstract expressionists. The phrase effectively evokes images of other public feminine figures in American media at the time — Sofia Loren, Marilyn Monroe. Their luscious personas operated under utter conviction and necessary deceit.
In her exhibition of recent paintings, on view at SOHO20 through December 20th, Alyssa Matthews mines our notions of intimacy, guile, and truth. This body of work is a focused reference to nostalgic media coverage of Lady Diana and other public women, and the inevitable desire their tragedy evokes. Matthews’ previous work aimed to create agency within her painted figures and their assets. In this exhibition, she explores the surreal agency already present in a coy message on a TV screen. The women heros of the 90s and early 2000s, nostalgic to Millenials, remain both convincingly sincere and yet never without rehearsal.
Matthews extends this duality to her paintings: they are classic bombshell-objects that convey a plastic reality in sultry tones. The picture plane evokes the seductive screen of our phone and computers, but the layers of meaning in the image denote the limits of history, of our perception and our understanding of these and all personas.

Media

Schedule

from November 25, 2014 to December 20, 2014

Opening Reception on 2014-12-04 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Alyssa Matthews

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