I have used palm oil in several works. Palm oil, combined with gunpowder and lemon juice, was poured over slaves to cover bruises and marks before they were sold. There is an interesting layering that happens here with palm oil as a commodity but also the enslaved as a commodity. Previously, in a performance, I covered my body with palm oil. The obvious next step was to create casts in an attempt to merge these two. While walking in Richmond, Virginia , I started picking up bricks to use as a base to place my casts. Part of my research led me to the history of the brick in the US, where slaves would harvest clay from the James River to make bricks. Based on the research I decided to create a monument, where the casts would lay on top of another to impart the sense of a pile of bodies. Eventually, these palm oil body casts melt and disappear. The large cube/base made of 1000-1400 bricks is the only thing that would remain, giving the sense of a removed monument.

The following weeks after the performance, I proceeded to go back to the site of the performance to collect bricks. I would collect 10 - 15 bricks at a time to place them back to the locations that I took them from. Due to the palm, gunpowder and lemon juice that melted on them, the bricks would stained with this mixture. This act would reinforce the removal of my action and my temporary monument. I consider these stained bricks that are embedded on the sidewalks of the city of Richmond as small invisible memorials. The markers in the map above are a few locations where bricks were placed back.

The Impossibility

Blue screen is a post-production technique that allows image manipulation. By using an even, blue background, the camera-recorded action can be transferred to completely different scenery. In his performance, Przemek Kamiński refers to the cultural history of the colour blue, approaching it through the prism of the ancient Greek term pharmakon, meaning medicine, poison, and something that must be sacrificed. The artist creates a series of vertical landscapes, in which a body irradiated by the colour moves between the visible and the imagined. The first and second plan, as well as viewers’ fantasies, blend into each other, while the identity is negotiated along and across the surface of the screen.

photos: Maciej Zakrzewski for Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk

Pharmakon (it radiates)

Drift 1

1006 plastic bags, 113x53cm 2021
 
This piece was made during the height of the pandemic and in the aftermath of the devastating Australian bushfires in 2019/2020. It was hard not to adopt an apocalyptic mindset, it still is, yet when chaos integrates itself into the everyday, I find piece knowing my existence is but a fleeting moment on an infinite timeline.

As one concerned with loss and extinction I can only relinquish to the thought that this is nature, I am , my thoughts are , my smartphone is, just as plastic is too. Does life cease to exist when I do? No, of course we know that, it simply passes by. Just the same as nature, it never ceases. There is no doubt that plastic will become and perhaps already is a time stamp on earths geology, a slither of time buried beneath infinite saplings.

Infinity Infinity Infinity

cigs

The work deals thematically with a very well-known Pop Art work by David Hockney. This is "A bigger Splash" (1967), as my title already suggests.
I have tried to divide this work by Hockney into its 4 main levels, then abstract it and transfer it into an equally reduced digital painting.

You can see the water in the pool, but a diving board is only hinted at. The "splash" in front is clearly visible. The colour yellow (originally the diving board) is very present,
but as a large yellow circle. The sun, 12 noon presumably. So you don't have to see the sky to understand that it is cloudless and clear.
The straight lines tell of a possible architecture, a bungalow. Old pink, of its colour, a shadow can be seen, but without any concrete attribution.


digital painting. giclée print on hahnemühle fine art paper mounted on dibond
date. 2021 | size. 100 x 100 cm
blockchain registred by verisart.
edition. unique

SPLASH

Image #13 from my lastest project Prototype.

My ongoing work Prototype is an photographic investigation based on rethinking the fundamental concepts and principles in photography.

In Prototype, my idea is to exceed the traditional concepts of light and reveal its intangibility. A new form of digital image does not only measures light concerning colors but also emphasizes a kind of separation. Light, as the most important element in any photographic process, diminishes its importance in its final stage, so it is no longer recognizable at the first glance. Light emphasizes contours, and trying to persuade you that the camera is your eye’s prostheses, but it’s actually not. Based on the illusion of photography’s time-freeze action, it emphasizes a phenomenon of acceleration that is obliterating our experience of distances and dimensions.

I am attempting to find the ambiguities in these pre-defined photographic rules, and using visual language to interpret the natural sensibility and homeless part in images.


Prototype 13

Fantasy Landscape for my illustrative book “Bobborama Worlds”
Email: gianmatute.image@gmail.com

Copyright © 2020 Gian Matute

Imaginary house

I am a mere observer of my environment.
A useless observer of my people and my country.
A country not only hit by the pandemic, but also a turmoil of endless political and economic crisis. 
The most disturbing feeling is that of being useless, hopeless and filthy.
I cannot undo what has been done. 

Acrylic on canvas
120 cm x 160 cm 
2021 

‘ Matsyendrasana’ in collapsing Beirut 2020

Oil on canvas
80cm x 90 cm
2021

Evolution of Inspiration 

This painting shows the process of creative implementation of an idea. The chosen colour palette reveals all aspects of the creative process from the search of an idea, from the nurturing of this idea to a point where it's taking desired shape followed by catharsis. 
Thinking, analysis, endless doubts are expressed by a violet colour scheme, and the answer, the epiphany is shown by warm colours.
This painting won:
First prize in the International Exibition & Competition St. Petersburg Art Week (Summer 2021)
Second prize in the Vanguard Today international competition in the Abstract Art section, in the Pro category (Summer 2021)
Silver Award in the International Abstract Art Competition CamelBackGallery in the Abstract Art Section «Shades of Purple» (Summer 2021)



Evolution of Inspiration 

Compositional poem using exploratory vocal looping, field recordings and poetry.

The Warning

Titled: THE KEY
Medium: acrylic and charcoal on canvas


The key

Waiting for Tomorrow

Limited edition fine art  prints for collectors and galleries. 

Produced on baryta quality paper, all limited edition prints are signed and numbered by hand by the artist. 

Each piece of artwork is accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. 

Dimensions represent full paper size, including borders (2cm).

Prints are shipped unframed.

The artist reserves the right to produce up to two Artist Proofs for each artwork in addition to the edition sizes listed.



The Stalker

Only the sky, only the wind Only joy is ahead! People riding bike. Original figurative painting. Contemporary art. Acrylic, spray on canvas. 

Bicycle

Comfort zone

This mask is made from papier-mâché and printed photographs. I have cut the mask and reattached it together and am wearing it. To me, this represents being mixed race, or when someone feels differently on the inside than what they show the world on the outside.

Self-Portrait (Split)


Year: 2021

Medium: Aluminum, industrial paint, Cor-Ten Steel

Size: 62 x 32 x 32 Inches

Détachment

Watercolor, graphite, archival ink on paper, 20x14”, 2021

FOLDS #3

Far from Home displays a fictional landscape of deformed architectural buildings. The domineering multiples suggest suffocation and anxiety which significantly symbolises enmeshment and the overwhelming protectiveness of a cultured household. 

Far from Home displays a fictional landscape of deformed architectural buildings. The domineering multiples suggest suffocation and anxiety which significantly symbolises enmeshment and the overwhelming protectiveness of a cultured household. 
Far from Home has been developed over a series of works. I have particularly been inspired by the Oil painting Syria which depicts “war” on Syrian architecture. Translating these ideas into 3D form has successfully increased the level of destruction, disaster and discomfort of the viewer which is significant to comment on the suffocation and travesty Palestine faces today.

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