Matthew Deleget

Sugar Walls
Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 64 inches, 2006
Private collection

Exhibition:
Matthew Deleget, Daniel Levine & Tilman
Gallery Sonja Roesch, Houston, TX, 2006

The four paintings I made for this exhibition were inspired by a Victoria’s Secret commercial. In the commercial, a supermodel in glowing bra and panties (Gisele Bundchen, possibly?) is presented head-on cat-walking through Pierre Koenig’s Modernist masterpiece Case Study House #22 (1960), with the city lights of a dark Los Angeles as backdrop. The supermodel is surrounded by glass curtain walls, modern furniture, and a swimming pool. The soundtrack is upbeat rock music. The image is superhyped, reductive and dazzling.

The horizontal format and inner proportions of these paintings referenced the language of Modernist architecture. The colors were deliberately hot, sexed up, almost garish, and were intended to reference skin and underwear. The paintings’ titles were deliberately provactive and referenced explicitly sexual songs by artists such as Missy Elliott (Freak On), Prince (Sugar Walls), and others.