The future has been the topic of the decade. Movies foresee it, legislators try to mold it and arts provide the commentary. With so much happening on the political and cultural landscape it seems fair to ask: What does our future look like?
A recycled future
The future has been the topic of the decade. Movies foresee it, legislators try to mold it and arts provide the commentary. With so much happening on the political and cultural landscape it seems fair to ask: What does our future look like? Could it be one ravaged by wars or filled with prosperity? Will we advance as a society or will we fail?
Artists have interjected their thoughts on the subject long before Colin Matthes was around. Matthes’ current work, EXPO, is a hopeful yet tragic look at the future that we are currently constructing. With daily news reports about irreversible environmental devastation, economic woes, and the general lack of ability of the planet to survive a growing human populace, many ideas and views on how to mend this broken system are being put on the table.
Matthes is from the midwest, yet his work is as hip, clever, and controversial as something you would see in San Francisco or Madrid. Images are plastered onto everything from brick walls to plywood in his exhibit as part of the commentary. Since receiving his masters degree from University of Michigan in 2003, he has been around the world exhibiting his art. EXPO tries to make sense of this changing world but is not afraid to make suggestions either.
“We always want to make something new,” Matthes said. “But what if we made new things using preexisting things?”
And with that comes the show’s thesis. “I wanted to use scraps to make something beautiful,” Matthes said. “I still have hope in human ingenuity.”
The imagery Matthes creates comes from the oddest of inspirational sources: carnivals. The correlation is obvious once you’ve seen his work. Much of the art Matthes creates teeters along the line of generally accepted to sort of creepy. Take for instance his piece “Shoot Into A Crowd,” which offers up a group of faceless bodies as target practice for a crazed gunman. Or another piece where a banner tells its small caged-in audience that “the future is some of yours” as we (the viewer) stare at the backs of their pudgy bodies.
“I’m also interested in the more complex relationships of commerce and marketing,” Matthes said. This idea still ties into the whole “recycling of goods” concept, but as the world changes with regards to consumption and products, how will this change manifest itself into the world of advertising, selling, buying and the marketplace as a whole?
Matthes was a guest lecturer at PNCA yesterday and was on hand for the opening reception of his exhibit at IGLOO gallery in Northwest Portland later in the evening. His exhibit is on display by appointment only until April 24.
The future is obviously still a mystery, but that mystery is because it is yet to be created. While Matthes’ exhibit is not meant to change the world or provide actual methods of planetary survival, it does remind us to think about problems that face our society outside of the structured norms and remember that sometimes there can be something learned from something as odd as a carnival.
