Colin Matthes
Colin Matthes’ makes paintings and drawings, prints, posters and installations. His work can be seen in galleries, abandon shopping malls and on protest posters. Matthes has spent much of the past two years in Ireland, first attending a residency at the Burren College of Art then at Cow House Studios. While living in the Burren, Matthes worked on the “Essential Knowledge” series as a response to the wild and barren landscape. Looking to themes of resourcefulness and defiance rooted in both survivalist and DIY cultures, the drawings provide not so practical instructions for imagined and real scenarios ranging from “Preparing Small Game” to “Landing a Plane in an Emergency”.
While at Cow House, Matthes worked on a series of large scale drawings addressing economic and environmental crisis. These apocalyptic scenes are borrowed compositions from Hollywood film posters, resulting in a narrative disaster film mashup who’s landscapes equally reflect many mounting failures including Katrina, Lehman Brothers, BP and the urban decay prevalent in post-industrial American cities.
