Chelsea, New York
Matt Magee
Shape Shifter
Ryan LeeWindow Ryan Lee Gallery is pleased to present Shape Shifter by Matt Magee, on view in RLWindow. The largest work on canvas that he's ever created, this mural-sized painting emerges from the artist's fascination with language, minimalism, and abstraction. Inspired by Agnes Martin's On A Clear Day print portfolio, Magee borrows the structure of Martin's grid and then inserts his own boldly-colored, rounded shapes into the empty spaces. Magee calls these shapes "graphemes," a word that means "the smallest meaningful unit in a writing system." Painting from left to right, top to bottom, Magee's work evokes a written paragraph and is rooted in Western language. Yet the meaning of the symbols is deliberately obscured by the artist's use of abstraction. Magee embraces minimal forms instead of letters or words to cultivate an aura of mystery as he leaves the message open to interpretation. Graphemes also reference the punctuation – from periods to exclamation points to ellipses – that gives language its emotion and rhythm. Matt Magee is an American contemporary artist known for his minimal geometric paintings, sculptures, prints, assemblages, murals, and photographs. Over a four-decade career, Magee has experimented widely with abstract and conceptual art practices. His compositions draw inspiration from personal history, numerology, and language. In his paintings and prints, he explores language through abstraction, repetition, reiteration, and the occasional tip of the hat to art historical precedents. His visual language relates to early hard-edge abstraction and finds inspiration in contemporary scientific, ecological, and technological ideas. His work is in the permanent collections of the Albuquerque Art Museum, NM; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, CT; Black Mountain College Art Museum, NC; the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, CT; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; Tucson Museum of Art, AZ; and the University of New Mexico Art Museum, NM.