Who's There Thin Spaces and Hidden Traces
New solo exhibit by Matt Wood
until June 23
Please see below artist statement and pics from reception below..
"This world, though seeming solid, will sometimes slide and glitch, slip and crack, for a moment thin just enough to reveal a glimpse of the things behind the things in front. Something that seemed at first familiar will shift and remind us of something forgotten, or distant, or missing, of something either impossibly large or infinitesimally small. I do my best to hang around as long as I can in those places where the boundaries between the physical, virtual, and spiritual realms blur, to capture, or at least imitate, those moments when the veil might lift.
Brokenness seems to be an essential cost of admission, as if no perfect thing could ever picture perfection. Between perfection and chaos, imperfections emerge as unexpected allies. Each errant pixel, brushstroke, glitch or printing error can become a doorway, a skyline, a cluster of electrons or stars, a familiar face, even, if we’re lucky, a glimpse into the very heart of things.
This show focuses on the digital side of my art practice. My experiments in digital painting go back nearly 25 years. In a previous life as an office worker in one of Toronto’s downtown bank towers, needing to look busy at my desk, I turned to a rudimentary drawing program - pencil, spray can, fill-bucket, all blocky, bleep-bloop pixels. It was unsophisticated and imprecise. I would try to do something, it would do it’s best, but, more often than not, it would send back something totally unexpected, sometimes something surprisingly good. Which would give me something to riff off in turn. Before long I began to think of it as a kind of call and response collaboration with the machine. Later, when I returned to physical painting, the process I eventually developed came from a desire to replicate in the real world, that intention–accident–response dynamic that I had had with an imperfect machine.
In this collection, I invite viewers to step into these thin spaces with me. My hope is that these abstracted, incomplete forms are invitation to the viewer to enter into the process and finish what I’ve begun – filling in the missing details, infusing the work with their own interpretations, memories, and emotions. The incomplete becomes a canvas for collective imagination – a thin space where intention, accident, and response merge, a place where grace meets brokenness, a hidden space where the divine whispers through the cracks."
I'd love to see you there.
Warm regards,
Matt
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