September 2020
“Material Conditions” at Matthew Brown Los Angeles
As galleries continue to adapt to a digital terrain — with a dizzying slew of online programming, exhibitions, and walkthroughs — Matthew Brown offers an antidote to on-screen fatigue. The gallery’s current exhibition, “Material Conditions,” celebrates sculptural materiality and labor-intensive artist processes — one of those shows that online viewing can’t quite capture. Michael Assiff’s works are low-relief depictions of florals and bug life that he has rendered through a process of piping plastic through confectionary piping bags. Ivana Bašić’s alien-like head…
Find out more »March 2021
Fin Simonetti at Matthew Brown
In Fin Simonetti’s solo exhibition, “My Volition,” a metal guard rail has been installed throughout the gallery, segmenting space while acting as a makeshift pedestal for hand-carved stone sculptures. The works are staged carefully across the railing, recalling museological specimen displays. Yet their forms—dismembered dog limbs, jowls, and hinds, as well as small hand shovels—bring the display towards notions of protection and excavation. In this light, the handrail display suddenly becomes an assertive and controlling mechanism of movement through the…
Find out more »April 2023
Hayley Tompkins at Matthew Brown
The title of Tompkins’ exhibition “Tell Gonzo How” references the style of journalism in which a reporter folds themself into the story and tells it from an involved, first-person point of view. In the way that Gonzo journalists (e.g. Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe) tend to casually weave their own tangential accounts and experiences into the main story, Tompkins forgoes a linear narrative and suffuses the exhibition with a similar meandering style. Rather than working with a traditional painter’s canvas,…
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