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)
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
Matthew Deleget
Lost Painters Blog
By Niek
March 12, 2011
Matthew Deleget
Reductive Abstraction Art
By Cyril Foiret
Trendland
March 3, 2011
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
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
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…”
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
MINUS SPACE at P.S.1
The James Kalm Report
November 2, 2008
Click image to watch. Interview begins at 6:55.
MINUS SPACE: The Art of Reduction
by Phong Bui
P.S.1 Newspaper
Fall/Winter 2008
Reality Check Interview with Matthew Deleget
by Jackie Battenfield
The Artist’s Guide
October 2008
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.”
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
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)
Intelligent Design, by John Goodrich
New York Sun
December 27, 2007
Review of Machine Learning exhibition
“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.”

“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.”
Neighborhood Beat: Profile on MINUS SPACE
BCAT / Brooklyn Community Access Television
January 25, February 14, 19, 23, 2007

“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.”

“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.”
“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.”
“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.”

“…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.”
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“…our neighborhood’s own ‘advocates of Minimalism’ Rossana Martínez and husband Matthew Deleget…”
“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.”

“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.”

“Matthew Deleget evokes the decorative leanings of Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt with a grid of white geometric drawings on black paper…”

“Matthew Deleget threads strings of silver hyphens across a black ground to create a kind of radiant, handmade Minimalism, at once rigorous and personable.”

“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.”
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“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.”
“Matthew Deleget’s paintings and drawings reflect his interest in infinite universal spaces, creating detailed patterns to describe them.”
“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.”

“And drawing takes a bow in Matthew Deleget’s radiating Op-artish abstractions…”
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“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.”

“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.”