Matthew Deleget
Artist Statement:
Reductive abstraction is at last shaking off the dead weight of its hundred-year history. It is no longer ruled over by self-imposed limitations or utopian visions of the world, no longer orthodox in form or self-censoring in subject matter. Reductive abstraction can be anything and be about anything. And, through the unlimited reach of technology, it has expanded beyond traditional geographically-defined pockets of activity, dialogue, and innovation. Meaningful work can be made anywhere on the planet. This is my point of departure.
I am deeply committed to this pluralistic approach. In my studio, I merge painting with conceptual, process, and installation strategies. For me, it is important to make work in the most direct, matter-of-fact manner possible — no novelties, gimmicks, or tricks. I am more interested in the idea of painting than the process. Paint is applied as if painting a fence, color is used straight out of the tube. I am decidedly unromantic about this process. It is all a means to an end.
I freely sample, remix, and often subvert my precedents — suprematist, constructivist, plastic, concrete, minimal, monochrome, pattern, op, neo-geo, radical and others reductive strategies. However, my work absorbs, digests, and reacts to what I see and hear around me daily in my environment — urban culture, corporate government, news propaganda, unwinnable wars, religious fundamentalism, unconscionable materialism, and more. I am interested in attacking the problem of reductive abstraction from every possible vantage point.
Artist Biography:
Matthew Deleget is an artist, gallerist, curator, writer, educator, and arts worker.
Matthew has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. His work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial by Michelle Grabner at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. His additional museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY); Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx, NY); Herbert F. Johnson Museum (Ithaca, NY); Bass Museum of Art (Miami, FL); Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (Indianapolis, IN); and Stiftung Konzeptuelle Kunst (Soest, Germany).
Matthew’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. He is a member of American Abstract Artists, contributes to the Artist Advisory Committee of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in Brooklyn, and collaborates with the national initiative Artists Thrive.
In 2003, Matthew co-founded MINUS SPACE, a gallery based in Brooklyn, NY, presenting the past, present, and future of reductive art on the international level. Since 2006, he has organized 125 solo and group exhibitions at both MINUS SPACE’s gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn, as well as other collaborating venues on the national and international levels, including in Mexico, Belgium, Australia, and New Zealand.
He teaches in the MFA Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts (NYC); Visual Arts MFA Program at Columbia University (NYC); MA in Visual Arts Administration Program, New York University (NYC); and MFA and Low-Residency MFA Programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia, PA).
He holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and a BA in Art and German from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN.
After living and working in Brooklyn for 25 years, Matthew moved with his wife, artist Rossana Martinez, and son Mateo to South Orange, New Jersey in summer 2019.
AAA:
Member Since: 2004
