Matt Lifson
Matt Lifson’s paintings engage the shifting nature of pictures, and the stories we choose to tell through them. They focus on the contemporary phenomenon of how anonymous images become ubiquitous catalysts for our own personal narratives. The work further explores how painting can warily thin the boundaries between the tangible banal world and its preternatural reflection. Images of wandering crowds, thrift store trinkets, children playing in a flooded backyard, etc., are buried under layers of color and gestural marks, distorting and disorienting their inherent narratives. Although realism remains mostly intact, the suggestiveness of a painting language takes over, subverting the familiar relationships we may have to pictures and opening them to potential dreamscapes. Lifson slows down the register of pictures and suggests that a filmic lens precedes our own experiences.
Currently participating in Wanderers at Tile Blush. On view until July 27, 2019.
Master Layer, 2018
Oil on linen in frame
15 x 12 in
How Long must I Wait, 2018
Oil oncanvas
24 x 18 in
Matt Lifson
Matt Lifson’s paintings engage the shifting nature of pictures, and the stories we choose to tell through them. They focus on the contemporary phenomenon of how anonymous images become ubiquitous catalysts for our own personal narratives. The work further explores how painting can warily thin the boundaries between the tangible banal world and its preternatural reflection. Images of wandering crowds, thrift store trinkets, children playing in a flooded backyard, etc., are buried under layers of color and gestural marks, distorting and disorienting their inherent narratives. Although realism remains mostly intact, the suggestiveness of a painting language takes over, subverting the familiar relationships we may have to pictures and opening them to potential dreamscapes. Lifson slows down the register of pictures and suggests that a filmic lens precedes our own experiences.
Currently participating in Wanderers at Tile Blush. On view until July 27, 2019
Master Layer, 2018
Oil on linen in frame
15 x 12 in
How Long must I Wait, 2018
Oil oncanvas
24 x 18 in