Matt Connors Look Up

Xavier Hufkens is pleased to present Look Up, Matt Connors’ second exhibition with the gallery. For much of his career, Connors, a New York-based painter, has shown an almost mischievous embrace of familiar templates to create what he refers to as “compelling confusion.” His approach to painting puts an emphasis on the idea of the structure of his work. By overloading the canvas with pigment-rich paint, or using laminate as a compositional material, he creates pieces that bend conventions. Much like the title of his 2012 book, A Bell Is A Cup, a painting is also a physical construction.

For his new exhibition, Connors has developed a wide range of tones, building on the inspiration he draws from life in a city built on grids, lines, and boundaries. Serendipity is an important compositional tool for Connors, and for this show.

Figures re-emerge in different patterns, with varied weights and palettes. Deep fields of color are balanced with blocks of white space. Borders can be traditional — contained within the idea of a frame — or can jut into the viewer’s world: Some of the pieces are not on canvas, but are instead plaster casts that paint has been encouraged to seep into. By mounting them on the wall or on pedestals, Connors turns them into objects with a mysterious form and function.