Matthew Deleget: Art+Words
Matthew Deleget: Art+Words
by Rich Bailey
The Pulse: Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative
November 21, 2012
My first impression of Matthew Deleget’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” (continuing through Dec. 7 at UTC’s Cress Gallery of Art) was that he was an artist speaking narrowly to other artists. But within a few minutes he won me over.
“Softedge” is a wooden panel thickly covered with layer after layer of two-inch blue painter’s tape, 10 rolls to be precise.
“Pleasure Zone” is three rolls of 3/4-inch masking tape hanging on pushpins. Both the rolls and the pins are red, yellow and blue, but the colors alternate.
Those same three rolls seem to have been used in “Note To Self,” a blank 27 x 18-inch sheet taped to the wall with two rows of the same colored tape, from left to right, red-yellow-blue on top and blue-yellow-red on bottom.
“Color Vulture,” the largest piece that dominates the gallery’s back wall, is three off-the-shelf white canvases with red, yellow and blue spotlights playing over them.
OK, I know it’s conceptual art, but it struck me as a collection of distancing gimmicks, as if he were saying “Art is no big deal, I can make it with light. And who needs to paint when you have painter’s tape?”
But then I started reading. Most of Deleget’s pieces are accompanied by long paragraphs of text.
All that blue painter’s tape in “Softedge” not only turns the tool into the medium, it is applied to the surface underneath in a grid, another artist’s tool. Deleget sees subtle color variations that are hard to control, just like with monochrome painting, and “The panel is transformed into a soft billowing pillow of blue by ‘I wonder what would happen if?’ a question that has driven the expansion of thinking in art, technology and science for centuries.”
In “Zero Sum,” Deleget comments on the commodification of art by himself commodifying the work of fellow artists. In this piece, he presents a set of five art books on well-known living abstractionists that he purchased from the sale section of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Like raw materials, these works of abstract art have been packaged into a museum exhibit, manufactured into high-end art books, remaindered to the sale table, then recycled into conceptual art—even more abstract—by Deleget.
“Nuclear Error” is 25 black plastic garbage backs pinned flat to the wall. According to the accompanying text, it is a subversion of “monochrome” painting. Turns out that both black trash bags and the acrylic paint used in monochromes are pigment mixed in a plastic binder. Art = trash bag. And these trash bags are held flush to the wall by static electricity, a benign manifestation of the same atomic particles that filled so many body bags after the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
These texts are mostly free of the ethereal over-thinking that can be so off putting in artist statements. Reading one of these notes prompts a little “aha” of discovery that makes what might have seemed like an opaque inside joke for artists into something a little richer and more subtle.
True, his work depends on the commentaries for some of its effect, but what doesn’t need accompanying text in these times?
Maybe a beautiful wooded landscape is self-explanatory, but when you drive through the Smoky Mountains, you might want to know why so many trees are dying (acid rain and Wooly Adelgid infestation). Digital devices strive to be self-explaining but most never seem to make it. And are the biggest events of our lives really lived until we tell someone about them?
We talk about everything, so why shouldn’t art come with words attached?
For me the bottom line of good art is that it’s cool stuff from the mind of someone who looks at the world and says, “What can I do with that?” From someone working with clay or paint to a conceptual artist pushing ideas around, artists spend their days attempting to create artifacts or performances that can go out into the world and hold their own next to everything else in the natural and human environments.
Deleget’s exhibition of visual-verbal jabs shares its title with the 1874 musical composition by Modest Mussorgsky, an abstraction of visual art into music that was the only record of the exhibition viewed by the composer. Deleget completes the circuit by showing pictures that embody abstractions and are best viewed by also reading.
“Pictures at an Exhibition” has been reviewed in the current issue of ArtForum, the ninth Cress Gallery show to be reviewed nationally, according to Director-Curator Ruth Grover.
Image:
Installation view of Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition, 2012
posted November 21, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Cress Gallery of Art, Reviews, Rich Bailey, Ruth Grover, Tennessee, The Pulse: Chattanooga’s Weekly Alternative, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition
Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition at Cress Gallery of Art
by Sylvie Fortin
Artforum
November 10, 2012
“Pictures at an Exhibition,” Matthew Deleget’s current solo show, features works made with common materials — painter’s tape, drywall screws, garbage bags, paint rollers, pushpins, and spotlights — which modulate walls, canvases, and pedestals to variously delicate, violent, and playful effects, and turn the gallery space into something of a construction zone. In the process, Deleget casts painting as a site-sensitive practice that enlists an expansive repertoire of gestures: wrapping, dipping, hammering, pushing, screwing, floating, flooding, and throwing away.
Deleget mobilizes a restrained palette—red, yellow, and blue; black, white, and gray. Three large yet unmonumental works anchor the main gallery. The entrance-facing wall is awash with Color Vulture (all works 2012), in which three monochrome floor-to-ceiling projections (in red, yellow, and blue) cast painting as event. A store-bought white rectangular canvas hangs hesitantly at the center of each pure-color projection: a reticent star in the hot spot. But stardom is here unsustainable and color unstable. Color bounces off the wall, sullying the edges of the neighboring canvases, while use unevenly and unpredictably fades the spots’ intensity. As one moves toward and along the work, one draws and redraws the canvases’ borders. Their shadows expand and retract uncontrollably on all sides. Viewers are left oscillating in a battleground between control and contingency. Ultimately, Color Vulture is a metaevent: a play on the rectangle in the third power. It also nods to Mondrian’s 1926 essay “Home-Street-City.”
One Thousand People Just like Me assaults a nearby wall with half-drilled-in screws, creating an immersive, if at times nearly imperceptible, grid. As one traverses the space, shadows variously thicken the screws/strokes, turning the work into a constellation of recombinant works-to-come. Across the room, Nuclear Error tenuously blankets a wall with twenty-five black thirty-gallon garbage bags, hung gridlike with static electricity and a few black pushpins. When push comes to shove, Deleget’s tight show proves the infinite power of deft gesture.
Sylvie Fortin is an independent curator, critic, and editor. She was Editor-in-Chief of ART PAPERS magazine from 2004-2012 and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Ottawa Art Gallery from 1996-2001.
Image:
Installation view of Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition, 2012
posted November 10, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Artforum, Cress Gallery of Art, Reviews, Sylvie Fortin, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Interview with Gorky’s Granddaughter
Interview with Matthew Deleget
by Zachary Keeting & Christopher Joy
Gorky’s Granddaughter
November 3, 2012
posted November 04, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Christopher Joy, Gorky’s Granddaughter, Interviews, Zachary Keeting
Curator’s Notes - Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition
Curator’s Notes - Matthew Deleget: Pictures at an Exhibition
by Ruth Grover
Curator
Cress Gallery of Art
University of Tennessee Chattanooga
September 2012
The inspiration for the title of Matthew Deleget’s exhibition derives from the musical composition Pictures at an Exhibition written by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky penned his composition in 1874 in response to his visit to an actual exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia. The score simulates the experience of a visitor to the exhibition, a musical interpretation of standing before an individual work of art and mentally absorbing and interpreting its formal qualities, narrative, and meaning. These movements are linked by transitional passages whose tempo references the act of walking from one picture on to another, and whose tone and mood suggest mental reflection.
There have been attempts to determine the exact works of art that inspired Mussorgsky yet the difficulty of recreating an exact visual image from the musical score is problematic. Mussorgsky’s 19th Century musical version remains as the only documentation of that exhibition, the memory of the composer translated to manuscript of staff and note. Mussorgsky’s musical simulation, and stimulation of the senses in its arrangement, becomes a form of abstraction. Abstract things are sometimes defined as those that do not exist in reality or exist only as a sensory experience.
Matthew Deleget’s reductive abstraction creates its own rich sensory experience in response to the broad plurality of our 21st Century world; a world where the idea of any singular reality has been replaced by discoveries of science, advances in industry and technology, the development of the field of psychology, the rapid accumulation of knowledge, and the burgeoning worldwide web whose complexity of content is nonetheless founded upon the simplicity of the binary function.
Deleget’s Pictures at an Exhibition will feature all new work specifically created by the artist in the spaces and dimensions of the Cress Gallery. Merging painting with conceptual, process, and installation strategies, Deleget’s two and three-dimensional works present premise as concrete, thought as object. Each installation is considered as a part of a total entity; each is a movement to be considered within the whole of the gallery. Their elaboration is derived from the pragmatic, the employment of “off the shelf” consumer goods as materials for construction — items familiar to each of us, now posed in a new yet straightforward context as visual predicates, their distilled qualities made visible and tangible.
Deleget’s work is not about “Pop Art”, “Op Art”, nor “Minimal Art”, yet it does build upon those histories. As paint for Deleget is just another material purchased at a hardware store, Deleget’s exhibition is less about painting, and much more about painting as a metaphor, a frame of reference to lead to other thoughts. The conceptual — the abstract — has been both the genesis and the result of “art making” since prehistory as the ability to abstract is considered a trait solely of the human species. While it might be said that abstraction is unconcerned with the literal depiction of the visible world, it can be said reductive abstraction fully engages with the complex and difficult realities of that world in a thoughtful, sincere, and direct manner.
Yet in acknowledgment of the intricacies of conceptual development, Deleget shares another connection with Mussorgsky’s work. Joseph Albers (1988-1976), the internationally renowned abstract painter and theorist, designed the cover for a Command Records 1961 recording of Pictures at an Exhibition. Deleget organized an exhibition of Albers record covers in 2009 that included this album, and it continues to hang on the wall of his apartment to this day.
Image:
Exhibition Announcement
Matthew Deleget, Color Vulture (detail), 2012
3 off-the-shelf white canvases, red, yellow, and blue spotlights
Dimensions variable, canvases 24 x 20 inches each
posted September 26, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Cress Gallery of Art, Josef Albers, Modest Mussorgsky, Russia, Ruth Grover, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Three Summer MFA Shows Tackle Painting and Its Discontents
Three Summer MFA Shows Tackle Painting and Its Discontents
by Allison Meier
Hyperallergic
July 26, 2012
“Three current exhibits focusing on recent MFA recipients show that painting is still being utilized by young artists for experimentation, even if they have to totally destroy the canvas with a hammer or fill it with cement…Then there is Matthew Deleget’s frenzied “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You” (2009), where four panels painted with silver were totally smashed by the artist, leaving jagged holes to the empty wall, showing that voids of paintings, at least when they are attacked in such an agressive way, can have just as much emotion as those without blunt force trauma…Art Peña, similar to Matthew Deleget in the Pratt show, has destroyed the place for the paint within the frame, here with a cake of cement in “Attempt 17″ (2012), a statement on artistic trial and error instead of Deleget’s angry love.”
Image:
Matthew Deleget
They Don’t Love You Like I Love You, 2009
Silver monochromes, silver acrylic paint on 4 panels, hit with a hammer
16 x 60 inches overall, each panel 16 x 12 inches
posted July 30, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Allison Meier, Hyperallergic, Reviews
Notations: The Cage Effect Today at Hunter College Times Square Gallery
Notations: The Cage Effect Today at Hunter College Times Square Gallery
by Eva Diaz
Artforum
Summer 2012
“…Between this circuit of silences pregnant with sound and emptiness full of incident, the artists in “Notations” continually return to Cage by way of Rauschenberg. The exhibition’s spare, refined installation rewarded sharp attention and patience, as many works would be overlooked in nearly any other context. Matthew Deleget’s Monochrome (Sleeper Cells), 2007, consists of three reflective panels coated nearly to their edges with white paint the same color as the gallery walls. Such a work might elicit a shrug elsewhere (as no doubt many monochromes sometimes to), but the discursive field of “Cage/Rauschenberg” demands subtler perception. Deleget’s paintings amplify shadows, and their color and appearance vary according to light conditions. Additionally the roughly applied perimeter of paint appears like the slapdash coats thrown up to cover graffiti on city walls…”
Image:
Installation view of Notations: The Cage Effect Today, Hunter College Times Square Gallery, New York, NY, 2012
Left: Matthew Deleget, Right: Linda Stillman
posted June 08, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Artforum, Eva Diaz, John Cage, Linda Stillman, Reviews, Robert Rauschenberg
Catalog Essay - Notations: The Cage Effect Today
Matthew Deleget
by Annie Wischmeyer
Notations: The Cage Effect Today
Published by Hunter College / Times Square Gallery, New York, NY, 2012
Cage’s use of systems and chance operations was a means by which he could divest his work of self-expression, preferring to let sounds be themselves, and ever fearful to have them bear the burden of carrying some meaning. Cage let go of the romantic notion of the artist’s hand: aesthetic decisions should have nothing to do with the artist.
Taking up his mantle, Matthew Deleget writes “I am decidedly unromantic…it is all a means to an end.” His approach to his work is straightforward — paint is used straight from the tube without any kind of emotional underpinning — and applied without any romantic posturing. Cleansed of any expressionistic content, his work turns into and investigation of reductive abstraction and its capacity as a vehicle for meaning — or lack of.
In Monochrome (Sleeper Cells) (2007), Deleget uses the same white paint of the gallery walls and a roller to paint over a trio of mirrored paper surfaces. Inspired by the slapdash over-painting of graffiti by landlords hasty to obliterate the illicit signatures of street artists, Deleget turns the gesture on himself. In an active of artistic self-effacement, or rather defacement, Deleget circumvents any attempt to read expressive content in the work. A coat of white paint denies the reflection of the mirrored surface save for the edges that peek from underneath serving only as a reminder of what is being rejected. The surface that had served as a mirror for both the artist and world is here rendered mute and impassive. Refusing to divulge any information, these paintings offer instead only a stoic silence. Or, in the words of Cage, “I have nothing to say and I’m saying it.”
posted February 17, 2012 | Comments (0)| Tags: Annie Wischmeyer, Hunter College Times Square Gallery, John Cage
Variety Trumps Argument at the Bronx River Art Center
Variety Trumps Argument at the Bronx River Art Center
By Stephen Maine
artcritical
April 23, 2011
“…Matthew Deleget’s work resides toward the other end of abstraction’s spectrum as the realization, on a painted surface, of a preconceived procedural idea. The colors in Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash) (2011) are selected at random—yellow, pink, fluorescent orange and copper predominate—and arranged by means of a predetermined system of recombination within a four-by-four unit grid. Abstraction as perceptual research, Shuffle is an extreme instance of the empirical attitude that underlies much of the work in the show, which is alert to pictorial strategies rather than intent on fetishizing subjectivities…”
Image:
Installation view with works by Cordy Ryman, Matthew Deleget, EJ Hauser, Jered Sprecher, Tisch Abelow (l to r)
posted April 24, 2011 | Comments (0)| Tags: artcritical, Bronx River Art Center, Cordy Ryman, EJ Hauser, Grandmaster Flash, Jered Sprecher, Reviews, Stephen Maine, Tisch Abelow
The Working Title at the Bronx River Art Center
The Working Title at the Bronx River Art Center
By Andrew Russeth
16 Miles of String blog
April 7, 2011
“…A small square by Matt Deleget — titled Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash), a tribute to the hip-hop legend who grew up in the surrounding community — contains far more punch than one would expect from a painting just 18 inches on each side. Filled with bright squares of pink, yellow, and orange, it holds up well against its sprightly neighbor, a Cordy Ryman put together with just a few wood blocks.
It’s a strange thing be in the neighborhood of Grandmaster Flash, just a few blocks from the late and legendary Fashion Moda, looking at contemporary art by artists whose work one usually sees in Chelsea, on the Lower East Side, or out in Brooklyn. Strange, but nice, with friends and acquaintances brought together en masse in a new context…”
Image (left to right):
Cordy Ryman, Vector, 2010
Enamel, shellac and epoxy on wood
36.25 x 33.5 inches
Matthew Deleget, Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash), 2011
Acrylic, fluorescent and metallic acrylic on MDF
18 x 18 inches
posted April 09, 2011 | Comments (0)| Tags: 16 Miles of String, Andrew Russeth, Bronx River Art Center, Cordy Ryman, Fashion Moda, Grandmaster Flash, Reviews
Lost Painters Feature
Matthew Deleget
Lost Painters Blog
By Niek
March 12, 2011
posted March 14, 2011 | Comments (0)| Tags: Reviews
Trendland Feature
Matthew Deleget
Reductive Abstraction Art
By Cyril Foiret
Trendland
March 3, 2011
posted March 04, 2011 | Comments (0)| Tags: Reviews, Trendland
A Slice of Splendor: Johnson Museum Showcases American Abstract Artists
A Slice of Splendor: Johnson Museum Showcases American Abstract Artists
by Wylie Schwartz
Ithaca Times
February 16, 2011
“…The spirit of the avant-garde, under which American abstract art came to exist, continues to manifest itself in much of the recent work on display. In Matthew Deleget’s War Monochromes (2007-11), six squares painted with fluorescent orange spray paint suggest the abstract potential for graffiti art; the radiant color spills off the canvas and onto the wall, evoking a recent trend in street art where abstract interventions rather than empirical messages or text open up exciting new realms of possibility…”
Image:
Matthew Deleget
War Monochromes, 2011
Fluorescent orange spray paint on canvases and wall
Dimensions variable
posted February 16, 2011 | Comments (0)| Tags: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Wylie Schwartz
Still Falling Hard for Art in Miami
Still Falling Hard for Art in Miami
by Elisa Turner
Art Centric
October 10, 2010
“…Eric and I made our way on to David Castillo Gallery, where I was so glad to catch Pepe Mar’s show, with its own lavishly-colored mini jungles of sculpture, and then it was up the street to Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, where I was simply dazzled by the very fab color combinations in the show “Color Climate: Matthew Deleget / David E. Peterson.” Alexandra explained to me how Deleget takes inspiration from the salsa musicians Fania All-Stars, and that each painting pays hommage to a specific musician. Since I was in a birthday party mood, I loved learning about this info…”
Image:
Installation view of Shuffle Paintings at Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, Miami, FL, 2010
posted October 11, 2010 | Comments (0)| Tags: Art Centric, Elisa Turner, Fania All Stars, Reviews
Ten Artists Look at Monochromes Now
Ten Artists Look at Monochromes Now
by John Hurrell
EyeContact
September 22, 2010
“…The projected DVD by David Sequeira shows two identical twins (or perhaps the artist in duplicate?) shaking hands while wearing superimposed monochromatic coloured shirts. The flickering optical bombardment of saturated colour is drolly amusing as an unstable foil to the enactment of a legal agreement, and this affability is a beautiful contrast to the violence of Matthew Deleget’s six panels positioned nearby. They are painted fluorescent yellow, and three have had their centres smashed out with a hammer.
Deleget’s action implies an antagonism to monochromes, if not a hostility to art in general, or perhaps the paint application of his own examples? He might be providing a gesture that is calculatedly open to any kind of interpretation, or he may simply be enraged by any implication of transcendental symbolism, or the hue yellow itself…”
posted September 26, 2010 | Comments (0)| Tags: EyeContact, John Hurrell, Reviews
Space Is the Place
Space Is the Place
A look back at the year in alternative art spaces and exhibitions
By Matt Morris
CityBeat
Cincinnati, Ohio
December 30, 2009
“Cincinnati’s vibrant community of alternative-exhibition spaces is my first love in this area. I am boastful of the innovations I witness in these unlikely places, where I not only exhibit my own installations but also, in several cases, help organize and curate exhibitions. I also write as an art critic for CityBeat and other publications, though I gracefully avoid reviewing my own endeavors, of course…
For me personally, as an artist, it has been a rewarding year. I have not only had the opportunity to exhibit in well-loved venues like Aisle Gallery but also been able to show — and come to know — less likely exhibition spaces, such as the stone staircase at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church or the Campbell County Library…
Overall, these are what I found to be my the most moving alternative- and contemporary-art experiences in Cincinnati this year:
• Touch Faith at semantics (Nov. 7-28). Guest curator Jeffrey Cortland Jones brought together an accomplished set of artists from around the country to look at current practices in abstraction and painting. I will never forget the subtle and deeply moving monochrome “On the Back of a Hurricane (for Rudolf de Crignis),” [by Matthew Deleget] a simple blue rectangle that employed a plastic shopping bag for its color and texture…”
Image:
Matthew Deleget, On the Back of a Hurricane (for Rudolf de Crignis), 2008
Blue monochrome, blue plastic shopping bag mounted on panel
12 x 12 inches
posted December 30, 2009 | Comments (0)| Tags: Articles, CityBeat, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Matt Morris, Ohio, Reviews, Semantics
James Kalm Report Interview
MINUS SPACE at P.S.1
The James Kalm Report
November 2, 2008
Click image to watch. Interview begins at 6:55.
posted November 02, 2008 | Comments (0)| Tags: Curatorial Projects, Interviews, James Kalm Report, P.S.1
MINUS SPACE: The Art of Reduction
MINUS SPACE: The Art of Reduction
by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Newspaper
Fall/Winter 2008
posted October 19, 2008 | Comments (0)| Tags: Curatorial Projects, Interviews, P.S.1, Phong Bui
Reality Check Interview
Reality Check Interview with Matthew Deleget
by Jackie Battenfield
The Artist’s Guide
October 2008
posted October 01, 2008 | Comments (0)| Tags: Interviews, Jackie Battenfield
Prattfolio
Creative Reflections on War and Peace:
Pratt Alumni Survey the Experiences and Consequences of War through Written and Visual Accounts
Prattfolio: The Magazine of Pratt Institute
Fall 2008
Featured my work “From Bad to Worse to Truly Terrible”, 2007.
“Although I would never consider myself a political artist, I have been terribly concerned about the War on Terror since 9/11 and it has been occupying a clear and central role in my work over the past few years. My installation From Bad to Worse to Truly Terrible is part of an ongoing series War Monochromes. The piece, which was shown in the Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn in September 2007, references a quote from a U.S. soldier serving his N-th tour of duty in Iraq describing the deteriorating situation on the ground. The black-on-black monochromes in this installation, made by first painting the circular canvases matte black and then pouring gloss black paint over them, occupy the space somewhere between bullet holes and oil spills. I wanted the overall installation to approximate a pockmarked wall in a combat zone.”
| Comments (0)| Tags: Articles, Prattfolio
The Front Row: Machine Learning at Gallery Sonja Roesch
The Front Row: Machine Learning at Gallery Sonja Roesch
Interview with Matthew Deleget, Henry Brown & Gilbert Hsiao
Houston Public Radio (KUHF.FM)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
posted April 24, 2008 | Comments (0)| Tags: Gallery Sonja Roesch, Gilbert Hsiao, Henry Brown, Houston Public Radio (KUHF.FM), Interviews, Texas
Technology in the Arts Guest Blogger
Technology in the Arts Guest Blogger
Center for Arts Management & Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
February 18-29, 2008
The Good…& Just the Ugly (2.28.08)
Drop Serious Knowledge (2.20.08)
posted February 18, 2008 | Comments (0)| Tags: Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Arts Management & Technology, Pennsylvania, Technology in the Arts
New York Sun Review
Intelligent Design, by John Goodrich
New York Sun
December 27, 2007
Review of Machine Learning exhibition
posted December 27, 2007 | Comments (0)| Tags: Curatorial Projects, John Goodrich, New York Sun, Reviews
Subspecies, Tobey Fine Arts, New York, NY 2007
“Matthew Deleget approaches the concept of reductive abstraction with a pluralistic approach. While reductive art is generally characterized by its use of plain materials, limited color, geometry or pattern, precise craftsmanship and intellectual rigor, his definition of reductive art is “anything and can be about anything”. His works incorporate painting, process art and installation in a direct, matter-of-fact manner that eschews gimmickry and novelty and absorbs, digests and reacts to concepts and experiences we are confronted with in our daily environment.”
posted June 09, 2007 | Comments (0)| Tags: Tobey Fine Arts
Kat Griefen, Material Matter catalog, Sideshow, 2007
“Material Matter also addresses the flawed yet common assumption that abstract art avoids political or social commentary. “From Bad to Worse to Truly Terrible” speak to this notion. The components of Matthew Deleget’s piece — gently curved circular canvases — sugget black holes, bullet holes, or something else sinister.”
posted June 08, 2007 | Comments (0)| Tags: A.I.R Gallery, American Abstract Artists, Kat Griefen, Sideshow
Brooklyn Community Access Television Interview
Neighborhood Beat: Profile on MINUS SPACE
BCAT / Brooklyn Community Access Television
January 25, February 14, 19, 23, 2007
posted January 25, 2007 | Comments (0)| Tags: BCAT, Curatorial Projects, Interviews, Michael Brennan
Simon Baur, “Martinez und Deleget: Farbgepräch”, Basler Zeitung, April 20, 2006
“Matthew Deleget zeigt seine grosse 32-teilige Wandarbeit “Red, Red, Red, Redder than Red”. Alle Mittelteile der querformatigen Blätter wurden mittels Roller mit Kadmiumrot eingefärbt. Horizontale Streifen am oberen und unteren Blattrand sind mit dem Pinsel in einer weiteren Farbe bemalt. Der Titel der Arbeit is einem Song Bob Marleys entliehen. Das Rot hat soghafte Wirkung; es schmerzt den Blick, erinnert an die grelle Sonne des Südens, ist für die Künstler aber auch die Farbe von Brooklyn, von wo die beiden herkommen. Skulpturale Malerei und Interaktion der Farben sind ihre Themen. Durch die Reduktion auf wenige Formen und Farben, mit denen die flexibel, erneurnd und dialogisch umgehen, gelingt ihnen eine logische Weiterführung der abstahierenden Malerei.”
posted April 20, 2006 | Comments (0)| Tags: Basler Zeitung, Hebel_121, Rossana Martinez, Simon Baur, Switzerland
Stephen Maine, “Painting Presentation”, Artnet Magazine, April 7, 2006
“But application is forthright in the work of Matthew Deleget, whose ongoing “Case Study” series, started in 2003, consists of four-by-four-foot paintings with a rolled-on ground color, and four smoothly brushed, twelve-by-twelve-inch squares in a pungently contrasting color, like brick red on aqua, or hot orange on a profoundly deep blue. They are deployed across the surface like tiles in a board game, in some cases giving rise to additional squares as negative shapes.”
posted April 07, 2006 | Comments (0)| Tags: Artnet Magazine, Gabriele Evertz, Hunter College Time Square Gallery, Stephen Maine
Abbey Ryan, Presentational Painting III catalog, Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, 2006
“In works from his Case Study series (2005), Matthew Deleget creates reductive paintings loosely modeled after the forms, designs, and concepts of the avant-garde, architectural Case Study House (CSH) program (1945-1960). The CSH program represents America’s most significant contribution to mid-century architecture and continues to have, to this day, influence as a reductive yet experimental system for innovative design and constuction. Working with acrylic on unprimed wood and smooth linen, Deleget builds up his surfaces with colors to create what he calls “painted structures”. After these “painted structures” are created, he then makes visual adjustments. These works reflect an interest in pattern, geometry, and architecture, referencing domestic elements sch as swimming pools, driveways, rooflines, and terraced gardens. With attention to structural design and form, Deleget draws from personal experience and nostalgic reflections to create work that has a low-tech, visceral quality. Deleget creates what he calls “social abstractions.” His paintings are not only inspired by the CSH program as it relates to popular culture today. On a deeper level, it is his belief, made evident by his evocative titles such as Case Study - Heathen (2005), Case Study - Villian (2005), and Case Study - Outsider (2005), that his work can also be understood as indicative of a critical, analytic position.”
posted April 01, 2006 | Comments (0)| Tags: Abbey Ryan, Hunter College Times Square Gallery
Gabriele Evertz, Presentational Painting III catalog, Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, 2006
“Matthew Deleget uses the positiveness of the geometric sign to lure us into the familiar territory of architectural recall only to suddenly immerse us in fields of unusual hue selections that are not necessarily informed by color wheel organizations, and perplexing figure/field reversals.”
| Comments (0)| Tags: Gabriele Evertz, Hunter College Times Square Gallery
João Ribas, Minimalisms catalog, Dinaburg Arts/Gallery W 52, 2006
“…Also geometrically rigid are the paintings of Matthew Deleget, which are partly influenced by minimalist architecture. By organizing his compositions according to precise relationships, Deleget builds a visual vocabulary of remarkable clarity and rigor that still bares the sense of color vital to abstract painting.”
posted March 01, 2006 | Comments (0)| Tags: Dinaburg Arts, Gallery W 52, Joao Ribas
James Kalm, “A Boom Grows in Brooklyn”, The Brooklyn Rail, July-August 2004
“…our neighborhood’s own ‘advocates of Minimalism’ Rossana Martínez and husband Matthew Deleget…”
posted July 01, 2004 | Comments (0)| Tags: James Kalm, The Brooklyn Rail
Christy Goodman, “Stay ‘Home’ for Intriguing Modern Works”, Brooklyn Arts 24/7, March 1, 2004
“The David Allen Gallery features the work of Charles and Ray Eames, known for their modern furniture designs, that combine style, art, and usefulness. The artists, who worked from the 1940s to 1970s as a couple serve as an inspiration to Martinez and Deleget, who are showing together for the first time in ten years. Most appealing to Deleget and Martinez was the Eames’ “Case Study House #8,” where their own home was meshed with their studio and was built on principles of low-cost, yet high-design.
“They had this great idea for their exhibition to incorporate aspects of the gallery, as we are a home and furniture retailer,” said Amy Schmersal, gallery manager. “Matthew and Rossana admire them and take a lot of inspiration from them. They are exploring what to live and work in a space together as a couple is.”
Included in “Home” will be two spatial installations by Martinez and Deleget’s Case Study House series. Both involve a strong use of color and incorporate a sense of architecture to their designs. While Martínez’s focus is more on urban home and planning using materials found in the home, Deleget’s idea is the home using geometric painting.
“We have been working together in the same studio. We usually work at the same time. We really share this space and also while we are creating or thinking about possible works we are always communicating and talking to each other,” said Martinez. She described their home as a laboratory where they live with and install their artwork, as well as other fellow artists’ work. Each piece is almost a puzzle that fits into the framework of the house.
“We are combining all these things and making it, like a balanced way of living,” she said. Deleget added, “Our vision of all of this is to really be holistic. We envision the artistic project individually and combined.”
He continued, “It is an experimental ground for creation. We really look to the Eameses as sort of a roll model for that. They thought about things holistically — their home and are are one.” They explore what home means here and internationally, as well as what it means to critique and curate each others work.
Living in Brooklyn is also an added benefit to these artists’ idea of home, as there are so many different artisans and craftspeople in the borough at this very moment. “Brooklyn is a tremendously creative and vibrant city. We are really invested in this community,” said Deleget. “So one of the things is identifying ourselves as Brooklyn people, Brooklyn artists inventing ourselves in the community.”
Taking this idea of what it means to be American, using utopian high-end design and high-art, “Home” brings this message to the masses — something that began with the Eameses.
Artist from around the world who share these ideas with Martínez and Deleget have taken part in another curatorial, critical project on www.minusspace.com. The site features essays, works and critical reviews of more than 30 artists exhibiting in the international community.”
posted March 01, 2004 | Comments (0)| Tags: Brooklyn Arts 24/7, Charles & Ray Eames, Christy Goodman, David Allen Gallery, Rossana Martinez
Terrance Lindall, “The Epistemological Movement in Late 20th Century Art: The Williamsburg Circle”, New York Arts Magazine, February 2002
“Deleget does drawings. To begin, he hovers over the blank paper and prepares his mind. He focuses and envisions (as an example) the fabric of space as a map of grids for reference points. Space without reference points is, of course unimaginable, except in the state of meditation where being and nothingness become one. Space appears to be warped according to the physicists. Matthew Deleget, however is dealing with conceptual space, a classical Kantian world where reason is imposed upon the world giving it order. Putting pen and ink to paper Matthew expresses with elegance what his mind has created. He does this with colors and patterns which suggest the calm elegance of mathematical thought, the unperturbed pure world of essences and closed systems of pure reason, a priori analytic thought…a world unto itself totally unaware of other worlds. To view Matthew’s work is to be drawn into this rarefied beauteous world. The question arises in critical circles: has intelligence replaced beauty? Not here, beauty abounds! Reneé Dumal wrote of Mount Analogue and Matthew has envisioned it’s peak: “Oh high, remote in the sky, above and beyond successive circles of increasingly lofty peaks, lies the utmost pinnacle of Mount Analogue. There, he who sees each thing accomplished in its beginning and in it’s end resides unto himself. The “art” for both Deleget…is as much the “act” of creating it as is the product itself, perhaps more so.”
posted February 09, 2002 | Comments (0)| Tags: New York Arts Magazine, Terrance Lindall
Fratiska and Tim Gilman-Sevcik, review of exhibition Bridges, d.u.m.b.o. arts center, Flash Art, Summer 2000
“Matthew Deleget evokes the decorative leanings of Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt with a grid of white geometric drawings on black paper…”
posted July 01, 2000 | Comments (0)| Tags: d.u.m.b.o. arts center, Flash Art, Fratiska & Tim Gilman-Sevcik
Holland Cotter, review of exhibition Line, Arena@Feed Gallery, The New York Times, May 12, 2000
“Matthew Deleget threads strings of silver hyphens across a black ground to create a kind of radiant, handmade Minimalism, at once rigorous and personable.”
posted May 12, 2000 | Comments (0)| Tags: Arena@Feed Gallery, Holland Cotter, The New York Times
Holland Cotter, review of exhibition 20 Years of the Artist in the Marketplace Program, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The New York Times, May 12, 2000
“Several artists seen in the exhibition are worthy of mainstage attention, among them…Matthew Deleget. Some have gone on to bigger things. They all look good here. And they are all part of an important history.”
| Comments (0)| Tags: Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Holland Cotter, The New York Times
Edward Sozanski, review of exhibition Drawing Rules, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 9, 1999
“Matthew Deleget also makes grids, but his are alphabetic. Block letters laid onto grids according to various plans produce subtle patterns created by the different letter shapes.”
posted April 09, 1999 | Comments (0)| Tags: Edward Sozanski, Gallery Joe, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Inquirer
Review of exhibition Mapping Space, Old Church Cultural Center, The Press Journal/North Edition (Englewood, NJ), January 7, 1999
“Matthew Deleget’s paintings and drawings reflect his interest in infinite universal spaces, creating detailed patterns to describe them.”
posted January 07, 1999 | Comments (0)| Tags: New Jersey, Old Church Cultural Center, The Press Journal/North Edition
Nancy Holland, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Drew University, unpublished review, July 1998
“With a poetic ransacking of the universe, Matthew Deleget uses his images to erase the boundaries between the physical, psychic, and spiritual experience. Deleget’s premise is that the material universe is knowable only through pattern, i.e. form and proportion, rather than through matter, i.e. particles or quanta. In other words, shape and harmony define the universe, rather than units or quantities. Pattern and configurations combine to create a new level of understanding about the energy and structure of infinite space in the universe. His Cosmic Volume, of 1998, is an example of the cosmos perceived as form and proportion. Using silver metallic ink on black handmade paper, Deleget evokes a cosmic construct that is at once compact and airy, pristine and brilliant. His Red Cosmic Temple, also of 1998, adds subtle organic variation to the effects of light, color, and pattern. The vivid color of his Stellar Radiation, of 1998, creates a spectacular burst of energy that is both vibrant and intricate.”
posted July 01, 1998 | Comments (0)| Tags: Drew University, Nancy Holland
Holland Cotter, review of exhibition Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The New York Times, August 14, 1998
“And drawing takes a bow in Matthew Deleget’s radiating Op-artish abstractions…”
posted April 14, 1998 | Comments (0)| Tags: Artist in the Marketplace, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Holland Cotter, The New York Times
TCHADA: Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture, Pratt Institute, Spring 1998
“Matthew Deleget, along with six other graduate Fine Art students, took part in the five-week Fine Arts Symposium in which each student formally presented their art work to the student body and faculty at Pratt by mounting a group exhibition, accompanied by slide presentations tracing their backgrounds, artistic development, and the concepts behind their work. For the following four weeks, predominant art critics conducted formal evaluations of the students’ work…Peter Schjeldahl likened Matthew’s drawings to “tantric wallpaper” or “apocalyptic interior design.”
posted March 01, 1998 | Comments (0)| Tags: Peter Schjeldahl, Pratt Institute, TCHADA
Joydeep Sengupta, review of Wabash Alumni Exhibition, Eric Dean Art Gallery, Wabash College, The Bachelor, October 30, 1997
“Undoubtedly the most interesting and innovative artist in the group is Matt Deleget ‘94. Deleget experiments with space and the underlying symmetry of emptiness. The viewer will be struck by the sense of depth and space that the artist is capable of achieving in his works. Deleget’s imagination ventures into the implicit, unseen “structure of space,” a realm where invisible patterns create an abstract framework around emptiness. Working mainly with ink and handmade paper, Deleget uses simple recurring patterns to create three dimensional space. There is a sense of vastness and a taste of infinity in his works, the pure harmony of a simple periodic wave.
While painting is an intensely personal experience, focusing on minute blocks of space and ensuring their uniformity reflects Deleget’s phenomenal ability to pay close attention to miniscule detail, not unlike a deeply personal meditation. “Pattern in my work,” says Deleget, “is a mapping device used to make visible the underlying unseen structure of space. Together, the patterns form a greater lingua cosmica.”
One is struck by Deleget’s ability to use repeating patterns with such profound visual effect. According to Deleget, the sensation that he seeks in his artistic journey is the feeling of “creating, infinite, undifferentiated space.” From sets of concentric circles to the ordered geometry of intersecting straight lines, Deleget’s works bring forth a calm harmony, the comfortable certainty of a mechanical universe with carefully engineered parts. These works seem to combine the classical geometry of medieval scientists with the abstract indefinite chaos of postmodernism, a truly commendable achievement…His work is sublime, like an uplifting prayer - beautiful, harmonious, and worth of admiration.”