One of my artistic inspirations of 2010 was collage artist Matthew Rose, after seeing his October solo show at the Orange Dot gallery in Bloomsbury. Back in April of this year, Matthew was lovely enough to allow me to visit his studio in the faded bohemian district of Montparnasse on Paris' rive gauche. Ascending the grand staircase in Matthew's modernist apartment building, I was greeted by the amiable American artist and shown around his top floor studio/apartment - its warm, timber interiors punctuated by the endless stacks of cuttings, materials and messy paraphernalia characteristic of the collage artist.
It was a real honour to finally meet Matthew in the flesh and have an opportunity to discuss his work, much of which had been featured on his various online presences including his sales blog here. Some of my favourite pieces included the the witty, tactile text-based works pictured below, each one featuring a clever satirical spin on a well known song lyric or little known artistic movement alike.
Matthew utilises a range of imagery in his work, recontextualising innocent looking, vintage-inspired aesthetics (in predominantly pastel hues) to create nonsensical, amusing and often disembodied comic book style collages. His pieces evokes an almost feminine, retro Americana...a feeling of a more innocent time of soda pop, diners and juke box jiving. Combine this with the inevitable European influence years of Parisian residency has injected into his work and you have the makings of a very interesting body of work.
This great poster below advertises Matthew's imminent Paris exhibition featuring his latest work and is available to download free from his blog here.
Wonderful, Matthew! C'est vraiment la verite!
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