Matt Bollinger “Between The Days”
Zürcher Gallery
[Image: Matt Bollinger "Before Work" (2017) flashe and acrylic on canvas, 27.5 x 36 in.]
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Zürcher Gallery presents Matt Bollinger’s fifth Solo exhibition at Zürcher, NY.
Following Bollinger’s 2016 Solo show, Independence, MO, his new animation Between the Days and the accompanying paintings and sculptures return to a suburb of Kansas City and its inhabitants. Bollinger grew up in this town, in a modest ranch house not unlike the one which his characters Carolyn, a mother, and James, her grown son, pass through in a cycle of waking, watching, smoking, drinking, and working out. In the mundanities of life—a screensaver playing on Carolyn’s computer screen, the shifting of light on an interior wall, the rising of smoke from a snuffed cigarette—Bollinger finds quiet, thoughtful and beautiful moments which he elevates in his painting through detailed observation of color and form.
At times we see the world through the presence of the characters, as we sit with James in his Chevy Impala to watch a passing freight train. At other times it is the absence of the characters that speaks louder, as we scan the empty rooms for hints of the inhabitants’ lives—a statue of hands in prayer, the TV left playing a scene of Law and Order. Most striking is when Bollinger uses fragments of moments coexisting, as in Carolyn’s Office, where disembodied hands recall Fra Angelico’s The Mocking of Christ.
Bollinger’s 18 minute animation is meticulously painted frame by frame in acrylic and flashe. The paintings in the show come directly from Bollinger’s process of creating the animation, in which he modifies and photographs the paintings hundreds of times. The paintings store within themselves the cycle of the passing days, hidden under layers of paint, or allowed to remain in carefully chosen fragments. After each sequence in the animation was completed, Bollinger continued to work on the paintings, deciding which fragments he would allow to remain. The sculptures embody gestures that come from the animations— James’ hand extending the car’s ignition key, or Carolyn ashing her cigarette.
The metaphors in Between the Days speak to themes of work (and working out), the weight of the quotidian, growth and self-betterment or self-detriment, change and lack of change. The cycle of days may seem to repeat endlessly, or hint at the occurrence of something exceptional.
Matt Bollinger was born in 1980 in Kansas City, MO. He lives and works in Holmes, NY. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003 and his MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS: 2016: Independence, MO, Zürcher Gallery, NY; Domestic Seen, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS, Intriguing Uncertainties, Musée d’Art Moderne, Saint-Étienne Métropole, France; Introspective, BravinLee, NY. 2015: Humeurs Noires, le Creux de l’Efer—Centre d’Art Contemporain, Thiers, France; In Storage, Galerie Zürcher, Paris; 8 Painters, Danese Corey, NY; You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, 68Projects, Berlin. 2014: Reading Rooms, Zürcher Gallery, NY; Odd Jobs, Times Clue, Iowa City, IA; The Reservoir, Galerie Zürcher, Paris, Image Makers, Novella Gallery, NY; 2013: Bed on the Floor, Zürcher Gallery, NY. 2012: Between the Days, Galerie Zürcher, Paris; 2011: about midnight Saturday, Zürcher Studio, New York, NY; Welcome Home Matt Bollinger, Hudson D.Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA.
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS: Nerman Museum, Kansas City; Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Dole, France.
Media
Schedule
from October 29, 2017 to December 21, 2017