Fivesparks is excited to bring these two exhibits to the community starting November 2. “Mediated Landscapes” is a group show of painting, drawing, and collage that probes at a very contemporary set of ideas and philosophies about the landscape and about landscape painting. Curated by Mathew Tucker, the common thread in this show seems to be something like a shared philosophy among the artists despite a broad range of approaches. It is perhaps a return to the idea that we are embedded and deeply enmeshed in the landscape even at a time when we might feel quite estranged from it, pointing at both our perceived separation from it and as the ultimate context and fabric within which everything exists.
Artists in the show use a diverse collection of devices and techniques to interrupt, distort, filter and self reference the image. All works, whether explicitly depicting or alluding to the landscape (or the history of landscape painting), point back to the way in which they are not the thing; they point back to the gap between the image and the landscape in real life, the idea of what the landscape represents and how we perceive the space around us.
These works engage with various themes and ideas embedded in the landscape, including a contemporary yearning for the sublime, escapism, climate anxiety, spatial relationships, texture, pattern, repetition, the materiality of the surface and the passing of time.
Featuring works by: Maxim Brandt, Melissa Brown, Joerg Dressler, Christna Haglid, Alexandra Hemrick, Cary Hulbert, Will Hutnick, Joel Kurtz, Olivia Mundy, Jackson O’Brasky, Claudia Rega, Masamitsu Shigeta, Mathew Tucker, Jan Valik and Rochelle Voyles.
“P
ortals and Thresholds”
Mathew Tucker’s work has focused on re-imagining landscapes as though looking through a window, an opening, or a portal. The rectangular forms frame the landscape to interrupt the pictorial space and separate the viewer from the vista, suggesting a broader metaphor for our internal experience of looking out upon an external, separate, physical world. Mat usually likes to invent a scene from his imagination, but will occasionally draw upon elements from online, personal photos, magazines, and household objects. He uses patterns or geometric forms to depict interior space and imbue a sense of order, tranquility, and domesticity. Plants often break up the space in the image and mediate between the interior and the exterior. The rocks represent nature and the eternal, and are there to ground the viewer, forming a connection between the interior and the landscape.
Mathew Tucker was born in Hertfordshire, England and was brought up in the Middle East, St. Lucia and England with his family following his father’s career in telecommunications. He studied Art and Design at West Surrey College of Art and later at LCP (London Institute). He earned a BA (Honours) degree in Fine Art in 2006 from the Sligo Institute of Technology. In 2016 he earned an MFA at Hunter College in painting. Mathew’s paintings have been shown at numerous venues and published in a number of international art magazines and online publications. His work is in public and private collections in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, the USA and more.