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© Matthew Mann

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Matthew Mann

Washington D. C.

Artist Statement

As an artist I have an interest in the language of design, art history, architecture and advertising and how these signifiers become co-opted into lifestyle branding and advertising. With mixed media paintings and works on paper, I convey both concerns, the humor as well as disdain, by combining all of these visual elements to create surreal interiors based on appropriated fragments of buildings, artworks, cultural and punk rock ephemera such as fliers and book plates.

My work is equally reverential and subversive. In large part I admire the artists and architects that I am appropriating, but by combining them in a spatially and atmospherically disjointed way, while repositioning their works as mere decoration and household appliances. Here I am striking a playfully dissonant note in an effort to demonstrate capitalism’s fraught relationship with the visual arts, a relationship in which I, as a producer of art objects, am complicit.

The architectural references, as well as the art historical and cultural ephemera, find their way into my work through processes of screen printing, direct and indirect painting in acrylic and oil paint, drawing and collage. In the end, however, through a balance of materiality, compositional structure, cultural references and humor, the paintings intend to corral the “stuff” of visual culture into paintings that reach into matters of art, history, politics and culture at large.

© Matthew Mann

Matthew Mann's Portfolio

Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas
Matthew Mann, oil and acrylic on canvas

© Matthew Mann

Artist Biography

Matthew Mann is a painter based in Washington DC. Taking inspiration from a range of visual media: quatrocento frescos, Looney Toons cartoons, photography, and graphic design, Mann has built an expanding vocabulary of subjects: architecture, birds, punk ephemera and other artworks to deploy within his work. In Mann’s paintings, these subjects, their environments and adjacencies reflect his pleasure in free association, humor and his experiences as an artist and citizen.

Recent exhibitions include Fixer Upper at Trestle Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2019); Mod Cons at Brick Red in New Orleans, LA; Luxury Trouble at Studio 1469 in Washington DC (2017); Strange Landscapes at Arlington Arts Center Arlington, VA (2016); and Shape Play at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Philadelphia, PA (2015).

matthewjmann.com

@metamuslix

© Matthew Mann

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