NYAB Event - Pierre Matter “Hybrids”

Pierre Matter “Hybrids”

AFA

This event has ended.

Pierre Matter’s sculptures are extraordinarily powerful. Even his smaller works – those which could be held in your arms – are heavy bronze, masculine in personality and weighty in gravitas. Feminine elements in his works, such as his reoccurring pink infant, are just as powerful, adding a wonderful balance to his work. Intertwined throughout the natural animal and human figures in his sculptures are machines: tubes, cogs, pipes and other mechanical items, recycled from scrap, encompass and even replace parts where we expect to see muscle, fur or bone. The aesthetic is beyond “Steampunk,” involving a deeper exploration of “nature…being changed by science, from the hybridization of humans and animals and machines.”

Born in Munster, France, Pierre was a “mystical child then a tormented teenager, studying mathematics. Via a series of twists and turns, he ended up turning to the “mystical world of art,” working with a host of media (oil on canvas, gouache, ink – including comic strips – and bas-relief on stone), before settling on three-dimensional volumes. Inspired by the likes of Bilal, Giger, Jodorowsky and Dali, Pierre works mostly with scrap metals and recycled objects, using welders, plasma cutters, laser cutters and grinders to shape and sculpt. “I’m a kind of salvager. I feel like a child in a heap of sand, but instead of sand, there’s a lot of recycling and scrap, full of magnificent objects. Often, the sculptures which emerge from these scraps of metal speak to us of who we are and how our future might be.”