ON VIEW NOW

Matthew Chambers
Tales from Cicely
25 Jay St. Brooklyn, NY 11201

On view until June 25, 2023
Gallery Hours: Friday-Sunday, 12-6pm & by appointment

PRESS RELEASE

Brackett Creek and Marinaro are pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Matthew Chambers.

The exhibition title, Tales from Cicely, references Chambers’ favorite TV show, Northern Exposure (1990-1995). In Season 6, Episode 18, “Little Italy” (not the artist’s favorite episode of the series), local store proprietor, Ruth-Anne Miller, causes a stir when she gets one of her stories of local life in Cicely, Alaska played on-air during NPR’s All Things Considered. Her story is of when Local Cicely DJ and Artist, Chris Stevens, made an art performance of catapulting a piano with a trebuchet (a Medieval catapult). After the story airs, Ruth-Anne is struggling to write her next piece because too many people in the town are vying for attention with their own story-worthy talents and eclectic personalities.

The oldest works in the exhibition, four 5’ x 7’ ripped paintings, come from a formal painting language that Chambers developed while living and working in Los Angeles. In the “Jazz Club” paintings, ripped strips of canvas were arranged and flocked to look like the acoustic panels of cinemas and jazz clubs. After six years in Montana, Chambers has replaced the soft textures and dark colors with the aesthetic of sheep shacks, loafing sheds, and roughly made but highly functional buildings weathered and altered by necessity.

The sixteen 4’ x 8’ paintings continue Chambers’ explorations at this scale, a size the artist has primarily been working in since 2006. This most recent batch of paintings were made unstretched on the floor and were primarily thought of as drawings, allowing the artist to sift through experience and thoughts with less preciousness.

Matthew Chambers was born in Boise, ID in 1982. Solo exhibitions include shows at UNTITLED, New York; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Rental, New York; Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles; Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles; Zach Feuer Gallery, New York and Feuer/Mesler, New York. He has been included in group exhibitions including the Saatchi Gallery, London; Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel; Marlborough, Madrid, Spain; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; and The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL. Chambers lives and works in Bozeman, MT.

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Susanna Coffey