matthew mcdonnell - recent drawings 2005

MATTHEW McDONNELLRECENT DRAWINGS

DRAWINGS COPYRIGHT © 2005 BY MATTHEW McDONNELL

COPYRIGHT © 2005 BY MATTHEW McDONNELL

GIRL READING BOOK BY CANDLELIGHT. 2005.

SUMI INK AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER. 12 × 9 INCHES.


LOVERS AND LAMP. 2005.

INK AND ACRYLIC ON PAPER. 12 × 9 INCHES.

NEW MOON IN APRIL. 2004–2005.



WITH WONDERFUL CELERITY UPRISING. 2005.




UNTITLED. 2005.

INK ON PAPER. 12 × 9 INCHES.


GIRL WITH BERET. 2005.


UNTITLED. 2005.

INK ON PAPER. 8.5 × 5.5 INCHES.


SPYING LOOK. 2003.



UNTITLED. 2004.

INK ON PAPER. 8.5 × 5.5 INCHES.



ATLAS. 2005.

INK ON PAPER. 12 × 9 INCHES.


UNTITLED. 2005.



LADIES THROUGH A DOOR. 2005.


115-06 84TH AVENUE

RICHMOND HILL, NEW YORK 11418-1415CEL: (917) 655-9416

TELEPHONE: (718) 441-1233E-MAIL: [email protected]

MATTHEW McDONNELL Painter

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

I was born in Brooklyn and raised only a block away from the Brooklyn Museum. The diversified collection at the museum played a major part in my early exposure to art. Irecall the Eskimo masks and the large totem poles vividly. The Egyptian caskets covered with hieroglyphs left an impression on me of the power of mystery and the occult. As a boy I attended summer workshops in the museum.

Painting began earnestly when I was a senior in high school. I moved rapidly toward surrealism and cubism. My interests were in Picasso and Braque and then the “totemic”Pollock of the late 1930s and early 1940s. Attending Brooklyn College I took classes in Classical Greek art, in particular, on the Black and Red Figure vase painting. I studied the work of Paul Klee more closely. At this same time I started listening to the music of the early twentieth century; Stravinsky, Ravel, Schoenberg, and Debussy. Later on I came to know the works of our contemporary composers Stockhausen and Boulez.

My work is always of the figure. I multiply the figurations and imagery using the “hint” and enigma. I prefer the suggestion of the possible without delineating the actual. An iteration of the familiar through an interlaced puzzle. Musical composition is often structured in a similar manner. A single motif is established, developed and embellished, yet through all this elaboration it can still be discerned.

So it is with the human figure in my painting; hidden and veiled, joined or dispersed it is still there.

Matthew McDonnellJuly 2005

P A I N T E R

MATTHEWMcDONNELL

The art of Matthew McDonnell represents something the artist calls “multivalent abstraction,” or simply “multivalence,” where, as McDonnell puts it, “multiple figures share one space.”

McDonnell derives the term “multivalence” from the concept of valence in chemistry, where an element is understood to have some capacity to unite or react with other substances. In a picture—and particularly the modern, surreal picture—the elements of the figures have a similar capacity to join or combine with other elements, other figures, and to create a new compound figuration. This compound representation allows figures or hints of figures to fuse and interact, and to constitute and animate the entire space of the picture. It makes the picture space alive, and alert, with all of the figurative cues, and intelligent attributes, that the constituent figures can bring. And it makes the total picture structure the coherent product of this sentient interaction. That structured apparition is the multivalent picture.

Though he gives his kind of picture a new technical term, McDonnell understands this kind of synthetic fantasy to grow out of the established tradition of Western fine art, and also fromour global heritage. McDonnell looks particularly to what is still called modern art, depiction as developed after 1906, and specifically to cubism and surrealism. Cubism, as developed by Braque and Picasso, made an image where representational cues structured the space where they were distributed. This model was extended into fantastic art by Picasso himself, and later Klee, with his special emphasis on whimsy. Surrealism, as developed, yet again, by Picasso, was a fantastic art that invoked flesh, as plastic metaphor, characterful, voluptuous, and vehement. McDonnell sees cubism as a means of integrating the fancy and organism of biomorphic surrealism into a thorough spatial manifold, where structure and the nuance fuse, where soul and sense inhabit and regulate space. In turn, surrealism gives a sumptuous gust to the organization and animation, making them not just abstract but gorgeous art.

Here McDonnell is also aware that all our important modern discoveries in figuration, from Picasso through Klee to Pollock’s “totemic” period, themselves reside in a larger and global tradition of the figure, where the human form and face and the psychological ingredient are not subject to the peculiar constraints of what we call realism. Indeed in culture after culture through time and across the planet, this deeper, acute realness, and psychic authenticity, is pronounced in the treatment of the figure we have termed surreal: so much so, McDonnell argues, that surrealism is the actual norm of world art. Developing its modern manifestation and standard, McDonnell practices this norm with a reinforced rigor, a renewal of principle, and conscience; a design, and culture, that refresh figment to order. This is the tradition of multivalence, as McDonnell advances it and builds it: where drollery and fancy, charm and feeling raise occult structure: but also ramification, tissue, and finesse, a space of functions made suave, vital, beauteous, and lush, as they breathe pleasure and structure and style into the sensuous interstices they render supple and awake.

115-06 84TH AVENUE

RICHMOND HILL, NEW YORK 11418-1415CEL: (917) 655-9416


MATTHEW McDONNELL Painter

P A I N T E R

MATTHEWMcDONNELL

EXHIBITIONS

2005 Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY2005 Metro Café, Forest Hills, NY (solo exhibit)2005 “Best of New York,” Gala, OHEKA Castle, Cold Spring Hills, NY2005 Paintcan Studios, Long Island City, NY (open studios)2004 Bazzini, New York, NY (solo exhibit)2002 “Strong Modern: Six Artists,” 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY2000 The East End Ensemble Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (solo exhibit)1999 Suk Design Group, New York, NY (extended loan)1998 “Orange,” Holland Tunnel Art Projects, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY1998 “Strong Modern,” Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, NY1997 Hunter College, CUNY, New York, NY1997 NYS Federation of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce Gallery, New York, NY1997 Consulate General of Colombia, New York, NY1997 Speliotis Studio, New York, NY1996 Conde Gallery, New York, NY (solo exhibit)

PRESS

New York Daily News, “It’s Panache from Palette,” Gayle de Wees, Thursday, November 16, 2000, KSI, page 5

Brooklyn Heights Paper, “An Artistic Salon,” November 20, 2000, page 11

COLLECTIONS

Nicole Arbour, Edgewater, NJ Richard Bedrosian, Brooklyn, NYRichard Carlson, New York, NYKathryn Dianos, New York, NYMichael Grutkowski, Lawrence, MAG. Paul LeBlanc-Cha, Denver, COMichael Longo, Hampton Bays, NYMeg Mazzio, Brooklyn, NYGarrett McConnell, Southampton, NY Steven Speliotis, New York, NY

MATTHEW McDONNELL115-06 84th AvenueRichmond Hill, NY 11418-1415 TELEPHONE: (718) 441-1233 CEL: (917) 655-9416 E-MAIL: [email protected]

matthew mcdonnell - recent drawings 2005

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