Artwork Title: Before Work

Before Work, 2017

Matt Bollinger

Matt Bollinger’s America This is the American dream gone wrong. We are unseen visitors in a world largely devoid of primary colors. When we do see these colors, it is because it is on the label on a bottle of bleach or laundry detergent. The setting is an indistinct neighborhood that can found almost anywhere in America — a cookie cutter ranch house in the suburbs, a weight room in the basement for pumping iron, a couch parked in front of a television, a window overlooking the house across the street — all of it bathed in dusty pinks, acid greens, violets, grays and browns. This is the American dream gone wrong – a life of emptiness and routine. I don’t think I am the first to be reminded of Henry David Thoreau’s telling words: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. […] A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. ...the colors are muted, and the inhabitants seem to be living in a world presided over by a dying star. ...While his characters are going through their everyday lives, one feels the despair – which Bollinger always understates – coursing through their bodies. They seem stunned, like deer caught in the headlights. They have reached a certain level of material comfort, but they don’t take much comfort in it. ...I was reminded of Edward Hopper and his vision of urban isolation and loneliness. I know this is blasphemous to say, but I prefer Bollinger as a painter: he has a softer and gentler touch that adds something to the emotional tenor of his subject matter. The other thing I want to add is that Bollinger’s views are less overtly dramatic. He often places the figure in the center of the painting. In this exhibition they are always seen alone. And yet, he is restrained in his approach, in the softening of facial features and obscuring them further in shadows and poorly lit rooms. It is as if we cannot ever really understand their despair and sense of isolation. I think this is the key to the difference between Hopper and Bollinger. Hopper gives us characters in a drama. We are meant to understand their isolation, but they live a different world than we do, and we can take solace in that. We are not the people sitting in a coffee shop late at night, but the ones looking at them from across the street. We might not have grown up in a suburb of Kansas City – I certainly didn’t – but the loneliness and isolation we encounter in Bollinger’s paintings is something whose silence we can hear. [https://hyperallergic.com/414491/matt-bollinger-between-the-days-zurcher-gallery-2017/]
Uploaded on Dec 5, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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