Saturday, January 13 – February 17, 2018

New Works from Matthew Bourbon

Saturday, January 13, 2018 Opening Reception, 6 – 8 pm

Rudolph Blume Fine Art/ArtScan Gallery is pleased to announce our second solo exhibition for Matthew Bourbon titled “Tribalism Begins at Home” from January 13
through February 17, 2018. In 2010, Bourbon had his first solo show at our gallery with the title “Our Splendid Defeat”.  Since that time, the artist has exhibited widely throughout Texas and also nationally and internationally.

Despite the invasion of the digital environment, Matthew Bourbon stays fully committed to the art of painting - a seemingly vanishing skill. Painting, to the artist, represents the activation of visions of worlds, ideas and patterns. Yet as they remain completely immobile, they are often engaged in an internal dispute about what art is or what art should be. In his most recent work Bourbon has included sculptural elements in order to explore ideas of reconciliation in a fractured cultural and political environment as he explains in the following statement.

“This exhibition emerged from my thoughts about what we deem reasonable and sensible in both our political environment and also in how we understand visual art. The central painting in the show, entitled “How to Cure a Fanatic” arose from my reading of Amos Oz’s essay of the same title. Writing about the Israeli and Palestinian deadlock, Oz suggests both sides have to be willing to live in the same house, with an unhappy divorce—despite legitimate grievances and competing claims. Oz’s discussion, which was written many years ago, felt directly related to the tribalism of our daily political and social discourse here in the United States. All of these threads were relevant as I worked in the studio to bring disparate materials together. Many of the paintings are for the first time paired with component parts—wood frames, stretched fabric etc. These combinations are meant to embody a kind of argument (or sometimes accord) between competing forms. At the same time, I began writing phrases on sheets of paper, which emerged as a kind of chorus of disembodied voices encircling the other paintings.

"Essentially, all of my work starts from my curiosity about the different ways one can establish the language of painting. I’m perpetually fascinated with how paintings are meant to “speak” via choices of technique and genre. Because my interests for this body of work were not merely formal or only political, I encouraged contradiction and uncertainty—such territory seems suitable to the caprices of art, as well as the constant chicanery and partisan spin of our current political climate.”--Matthew Bourbon

Seeing our entire four-room gallery filled with these splendid works of art is a rare luxury we are proud to present to our friends in the art community.