This post was prompted by the new video work posted on Matthew Stone: Optimism As Cultural Rebellion and also the latest post indicating a new exhibition in Denmark ‘Body Language’
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Emerging from a strongly collaborative South London squat-scene of young artists,actors, writers, musicians, moviemakers and designers, Stone produces chiaroscuro laden photography, dramatically portraying friends and night-time players stripped of context-locating clothing, draped in cheap fabric swatches, and locked in self-absorbed states of romanticised visionary ecstasy. His photographic images assert a deadpan observational tone, whilst simultaneously proposing a heightened version of what is already present: taking a step back to revel in the dynamic, the construction of a particular image, and the amplification of the inherent mythologies underpinning his subjects.(Union gallery via Fieldgate)
Optimism as cultural rebellion, 2005.
The tension of dark and light, weakness and strength, the spontaneous and meticulously planned. These are the opposites that draw me to Stones work. The (fleshier) classical bodies in constructed rituals that come alive in video work and photographic stills that conjure a Utopian co-existence with a balancing hint of the sinister as the players push and pull at each other.
I havnt seen nearly as much of Matthew Stones work as I would like, much of my viewing has been via the web with an impressive piece at the JT Project. I have mentioned stone’s blog before: Updated with new work or curious finds: I love it…. Matthew Stone: Optimism As Cultural Rebellion
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New Exhibition:
V1 Gallery
BODY LANGUAGE is the new exhibition by Matthew Stone at V1 Gallery (Denmark). The solo show will include new photography, sculpture and collage.
Matthew Stone’s (b. 1982) human landscapes are monumental and simple, strong and fragile. His mounds of naked bodies are presented as multidimensional beings full of life.
The pivotal questions are of separation and return, of challenges to perceptions of individuality. Separated bodies physically return; placed together to undergo a romantic mutation that enables a metaphysical reconnection. Stone uses the interplay of light and darkness to follow sculptural curves and surfaces, awakening the imagination’s desire to delve into the (c)overt.
It is this polarisation that creates the fields of tension in all of Stone’s works. Our surroundings and ourselves often seem divided into irreconcilable binaries: right/wrong, light/dark, good/evil, I/other. Rather than rejecting these overly simplistic, seeming contradictions, Stone proposes new contexts for their powerful co-existence.
In his performative rituals and collectively-minded shoots the camera becomes a shamanic tool used to invoke and create history, rather than to document it. With art as his weapon of choice Matthew challenges fear and denudes a newly defined optimism that not only sheds light on man, but also on the endless possibilities we are all composed of.
Matthew Stone was recently named the most influential living British artist under 30 by The Sunday Times and Norman Rosenthal, curator and critic, has draw comparison to the energy of a young Hirst. This is Matthew Stone’s first solo exhibition in Denmark. (Matthew Stone: Optimism As Cultural Rebellion)
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“Optimism is the Vital Force that Entangles itself with and then Shapes the Future.” Stone’s work revolves specifically around creative interactions and community, based on the idea that individual autonomy can be successfully combined with the power of collectivity.
