EMERGING ARTIST: US artist Matt BOLLINGER
Born in 1980 in Kansas City, Missouri
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
2007: M.F.A., Painting Major, with Honors, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
As we all know when intimate topics are treated with honesty they become universal. This is what happens with young American Artist Matt Bollinger.
When looking at a piece of art we feel empathy with those short stories. Like President Kennedy in Germany in 1963 when he said “Ich bin ein Berliner”, when I see that young woman with a bag-pack going somewhere on “Passing – 2013 ” I am tempted to say “I am that woman” or when I see that large scene in graphite of doors of American cars open I think it could be mine or my neighbor’s.
Through his high skill level in using graphite, he can draw large scenes from the dark side of American lives that turn easily in drama because of his wide palette of grays.
Through his collage technique, Bollinger scenes work like snails whose shell grows with the years, or like trees that protect themselves with an additional layer of bark. It is as if one important event or one more suffering caused gives rise each time to one more layer of paper cut and pasted to leave a trace of it. BCh
Guest (Provo), 2012, Flashe and acrylic on cut and pasted paper, 60 x 48 in. (152 x 123 cm) Courtesy Galerie Zürcher
