NYAB Event - Matt Straub “Iʼm Hit. But I Can Make It."

Matt Straub “Iʼm Hit. But I Can Make It."

The Art Bazaar / Lyons Wier Gallery Project Space

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Born in Cheyenne Wyoming, Matt Straub spent his early years hitchhiking and hopping freight trains across the Western states. Straub reveals his deep nostalgia for the harsh landscapes of the American West in his latest body of work, Iʼm Hit. But I Can Make It.

With a bold comic visual vocabulary and sensibility, Straubʼs paintings echo the period of transition between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Featuring classic Western iconographic images of cowboys, cowgirls, guns and horses, Straubʼs paintings and collages depict the humorous and violent narratives and sentimental mythologies of the American West – a landscape defined by melancholy sunsets, badlands, gunfights, outlaws and red-blooded heroes. His references include Hollywood Westerns and the Comics and Pulps of the 1940ʼs-50ʼs. Straubʼs graphic and illustrative narratives combine characters and caricatures inspired by Western pulp writers and illustrators such as Zane Grey and Raymond Kinstler and film directors John Ford and Sergio Leone. The paintingsʼ varied surfaces resonate with affinities to artists such as William De Kooning, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Sigmar Polke and Brice Marden.
Straubʼs work also looks under the hood of the present day reality of the American West, with its concrete plains and Mini-Mart cowboys—places where the buffalo used to roam. Straub tackles the highs and lows of society with a comic visual vocabulary and a bold, fresh Pop Art sensibility. His Pop-Westerns are like graffiti splattered box cars rolling across the plains, their nostalgia a metaphor for a vanishing West.