Talented, tenacious, smart and determined, Michelle Matson is gaining the critical respect long since established with her artistic contemporaries. Walking past Michelle's paper sculptures as a student at the School of Visual Arts was always an exciting experience. I found it remarkable how she could transform a traditionally soft, delicate material into such hard hitting, grotesquely comical sculptures. Primarily a sculptor, Michelle is an amazing craftsperson, wowing as much with the 'build' as with the content of her work. I remember a portrait that she once made of her partner at the time of us studying at SVA, there was a technical quality to the painting that was impressive but also an undefinable mystery that she achieved through the way it was painted. Her commitment to craftsmanship and materiality has only strengthened since then and it is amazing to see her work as it has evolved to this point.
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Sculpture by Michelle Matson[/caption]
Matson is included in an exhibition at Postmasters this month titled 'This is What Sculpture Looks Like' - a survey of new ideas in sculpture from the new generation of female artists bursting onto the New York contemporary scene. Roberta Smith from The New York Times noted 'The best things about this overflowing group show of sculptures by 16 artists are its freewheeling spirit and sprawling diversity of approaches, materials and subjects, as well as its exclusively female roster. To a degree, these factors balance the weaker, more conventional inclusions. Among the show’s standouts...
Michelle Matson who lampoons public art, adding paper apples and banana peels to a Sheetrock mock-up of a sculpture, as if it were already dotted with colorful garbage.' New York Times July 24th 2014. Matson has been featured in
Beautiful Decay as well as being a contestant on America's Work of Art. To follow Michelle's career or purchase Michelle's range of prints visit her
PROFILE page at www.twfineart.com.
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What appears to be a sculptural structure made of simple styrofoam cubes littered with food scraps and tennis balls, is actually a carefully crafted sculpture of imitation.
We live in a world of imitation - a Louis Vuitton bag in the store may be copied in some backwater factory and sold on the street for a small fraction of the price of the 'original' sold in the store.
It's our business to take a high value artwork and reproduce it in a limited edition print that is essentially a replica - only it costs almost nothing compared to the original. To the undescerning eye the copy is as good as the original, it feels the same, weighs the same, looks the same - so isn't it essentially the same? What makes one item more valuable than the other? Duchamp offers a theory - that is one of context; if a run of the mill bottle rack is turned upside down and placed in a Gallery, it is more valuable than the exact same bottle rack that you have sitting in the garage.
It's an interesting philosophical question that makes you question the way we assign value to objects. Why do we value one thing more than another, even if they appear exactly the same?
I remember being quite taken with some sculptures by Jeff Koons. The pieces were these inflatable pool sculptures that seemed to float around Sonnabend Gallery when they were exhibited in 2003. I was totally convinced that they were appropriated plastic blow up toys until I touched one. They looked like plastic toys, the only difference was that they were cold to the touch - not plastic at all, rather exact replicas cast out of aluminum & steel. He reversed the Louis Vuitton scenario - making a mass produced $5.00 pool toy into a multi million dollar work of art.
Matson seems to be playing with the same ideas. In this sculpture she has taken rather utilitarian items, like styrofoam cubes and created hand made replicas, stacking them into a sculptural formation as if they were the real thing about to be carved out. She has then hand made scraps of discarded food like banana peels (from paper) and imitation tennis balls and thrown them atop the sculpture like preciously disregarded trash. Its quite a commentary on the precious verses the utilitarian - like Koons, something rather benign and valueless has been converted into art.
This line of thinking is very relevant to our lives at the moment. Mass production techniques have elevated the copy to a state of almost perfect imitation. Retailers have cottoned on to the idea, designers like Stella McCartney not only cater to the exclusive one off, but make high quality garments that can be massed produced through better production capabilities and offer them through other retailers at a fraction of the price of the items in her stores. Just as good as the high end thing - for most of us? I think so.
Matson & Koons reverse this thinking and the result is fascinating. Visit Michelle's website to view more of her amazing work.