Matt Greene “Pictures of Women”

Matt Greene’s recent work is about finding a space for representational art in contemporary culture. How does our way of seeing fit into the natural world? The artist seeks to find some common ground between the historical form of painting and the indexed stacking of images created by digital media. In Pictures of Women, his second solo show at Deitch Projects, Greene presents large-scale works that further his investigations into the connections between sexual fetish, the female figure, and forms of nature. Asserting that painting occupies an inherently ambiguous space between fantasy and material, Greene’s landscapes depict environments in which multilayered images superimpose themselves over the experience of reality. Faceless androgynous figures engage in ritualized behavior in spaces resembling holograph viewing rooms from science fiction; gridded chambers into which fantasies are projected. These works incorporate drawing and photography interchangeably and indifferently; the heavily textured surfaces that emerge are dripped with thick coatings of varnish that trap the images like insects in amber.

The exhibition opens April 11, 2009. Catch it at Deitch Projects, 76 Grand Street, New York to May 2, 2009.