NYAB Event - Matt Bahen “Sometimes Comes the Mother, Sometimes the Wolf”

Matt Bahen “Sometimes Comes the Mother, Sometimes the Wolf”

Munch Gallery

This event has ended.

Munch Gallery presents ‘Sometimes Comes the Mother, Sometimes the Wolf’ – new work by Canadian painter, Matt Bahen. This is Bahen’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, and we are proud to be showing a selection of small and large scale oil paintings.

Until recently, Matt Bahen intently explored one, perhaps two themes at a time in his paintings for periods of several months up to a couple of years. Typically, those paintings portrayed desolate, overcast, wintry wildernesses or seeping, dilapidated interiors of abandoned buildings. Scant evidence of location or cause of the conditions was depicted. The places appeared forbidding and depopulated, thus reasoning and explanation were beside the point. They are not strictly uninhabited however; packs of feral dogs frequently pass through the woods or tussle in the ruins. Without explicit description, the scenes conjure the still eternities of aftermath or holocaust. Yet Bahen’s variations and elaborations of these motifs do not portend doom. He intends them as glimpses into the crises, conflicts and pains of tragedy and loss.

In the past year however, an incremental lift and sweeping liberty has occurred in Bahen’s art. The tone has shifted from conflict to contradiction. And in contradiction, Bahen identifies the very terms of life, growth, a resetting of the clock and reason to watch and honour time. His motifs have multiplied. The paintings pronounce the perpetual emergence of life and mystery.

Matt Bahen is recognized for his human scale works on canvas, addressing themes of loss and the question of how to carry on. His use of a thick and heavily applied impasto technique, emphasizes the visceral quality of the delivery and subject. One of Canada’s most engaging young painters, Bahen’s work continues to grow in profile, having exhibited in Canada, the US and in Europe.

[Image: Matt Bahen “Kurtz” (2014) oil on canvas, 78x78 in. ]