Matthew Antezzo
http://matthew.antezzo.org/links

The solo show of New York based artist Matthew Antezzo (b. 1962) at Klosterfelde Gallery presents an
overview of recent paintings and drawings. In his new body of work Antezzo continues his practice of
using found imagery and appropriating it by means of painting, thus subverting it into his own poetical
language.

The title of the exhibition refers to the underlying interest in creating a personal archive of images. An
open set of links is selected out of pictorial sources such as old magazines and books as well as web-
sites. The historical content of the footage is on first view as diverse as the history of computer, the Indian
Movement or moments of early Conceptualism and other inventive periods in art history. What they all
have in common is an inscription of a certain historical moment of revolt or resistance formed in a revo-
lutionary period in which the radical shift both in the rules of culture and in political thinking seemed pos-
sible. A 1973 cartoon entitled "PC-People" of a protesting crowd demonstrating against the gradual mo-
nopolization of the computer systems; policemen invading an Allan Kaprow happening; a "Women
Unite!"-poster.

For all the interest in the historical background, Antezzo‘s paintings are far away from photorealism. Instead they construct a subtle tension between the social document of the photograph and the repicturing of it on the canvas/ paper. The scale of the drawings and paintings, and the variety of techniques and appearances in the texture of the surfaces - from flat and direct to a trained accuracy in the brushwork i.e. the "painterlyness" of the works succeed in reviving the events into the poetic realm of memory and personal experience. It is a strategy of "trans-picturing an image from a historical document into an instance of 'history painting'." (Mario Diacono)

Please do not hesitate to contact the gallery for any further information.

opening May 3rd, 2002, 6 - 9 pm
exhibition May 4th - June 22nd, 2002
opening hours Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 am - 6 pm