Matt Bollinger, Painter of the Forgotten
In 2021, after I reviewed the exhibition Matt Bollinger: Furlough at Zürcher Gallery, I concluded with this:
Bollinger is a significant artist whose chronicling of a considerable sector of American life is greater than a commentary on the failures of capitalism. It’s a heartfelt and considerate response to a demographic trapped in a cycle of comfortless choices.
Whereas Bollinger has not prolonged the geographic parameters of his material, his recollections and views of Independence, Kansas, he has strengthened and deepened it on this small, stunning, melancholic exhibition, Matt Bollinger: Station at François Ghebaly (April 22–Might 27, 2023). The exhibition contains six current work and “Between the Days,” an 18-minute hand-painted stop-motion animation dated 2017, which is properly price seeing in its entirety — Bollinger’s animations are as robust and compelling as his work.
Bollinger works in flashe and acrylic on canvas, giving his work a matte floor. Positioned within the entrance gallery, they vary in measurement from 20 by 16 to 96 by 78 inches. He appears to have the ability to work in a spread of sizes with out diminishing the facility of his photos. “Uncle Dave” (2023), the present’s largest portray, depicts three sanitation employees on the job. Collectively, they kind a triangle, set towards a yellow truck with an open door. The apex of the triangle is occupied by the biggest, and oldest, determine, flanked on both aspect by a youthful man smoking a cigarette.
Not one of the artist’s figures come near becoming the beliefs of bodily magnificence upheld by Hollywood, style designers, or health and wonder magazines. In distinction to Claude Monet and different Impressionists, who centered on leisure time, which was a brand new phenomenon in mid-Nineteenth-century France, Bollinger acknowledges how the need for reasonable labor and revenue has degraded that chance. Staring blankly as they carry out the required duties of an unfulfilling job, the women and men in his work are bothered by an unnamable malaise. They know that what they’re doing is fruitless.
Within the two largest works — each of which belong in museums — Bollinger makes use of coloration to construction the portray and inflect the temper in ways in which set him other than his contemporaries and historic precedents, comparable to Edward Hopper. As rigorously choreographed as “Uncle Dave” is, it by no means feels nonetheless due to the function coloration performs in unifying and distinguishing the figures. Holding a rake in a single hand and an unlit cigarette within the different, the younger man on the fitting stares vacantly on the man reverse him. Dressed within the brightest yellow of this very yellow portray, he’s the one determine of the three not wanting on the viewer. The older man climbing into the truck can be taking a look at us. The tonal shifts within the yellow assist maintain the portray collectively, and add one other emotional dimension.
The 2 males wanting on the viewer contact on the pressure infecting the present “us and them” scenario in america. That encounter between the topic and viewer, which is central to trendy portray, starting with Edouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and the prostitute staring haughtily on the viewer, may be very totally different from the voyeuristic viewpoint taken by Hopper and continued by artists comparable to Eric Fischl. Being a voyeur permits the viewer to really feel superior, a place Bollinger always pushes towards in his work. Whereas the younger man with the rake is sporting a vivid, clear uniform, the yellow truck behind him is soiled. Can the bulk white-collar viewers of artwork galleries, lots of whom are additionally rich, see him as separate from his job? Are the one true assessments of a person people who must do with look, energy, and materials wealth? Can this viewers carry trash collectors into their houses and museums? These are the questions Bollinger asks.
Bollinger touches extra instantly on the futility of labor in a mechanized world in “Chilly Drinks” (2023), which juxtaposes a younger man promoting gentle drinks from a cooler subsequent to a “Pepsi” merchandising machine. Each the merchandising machine and younger man are bathed in numerous shades of turquoise and blue, which bonds them. A pair of palms extends in from the portray’s proper edge, providing cash to the younger man for a drink. He doesn’t appear to note and, on some degree, seems stiff and hollow-eyed, just like the merchandising machine.
I discovered one thing fascinating, participating, and difficult about each portray within the exhibition. In numerous methods, they circle subjects comparable to waste, recycling, and labor, however they do greater than touch upon them. Like Kerry James Marshall, Jordan Casteel, and Aliza Nisenbaum, Bollinger offers with the unseen and ignored. One distinction is that he reveals his topics’ joylessness — one thing that you’ll not discover within the work of the opposite three artists. Bollinger has his finger on the heart beat of one thing that’s disquieting: the simmering discontent of a large swath of the US inhabitants. One other distinction is that he offers with class, which few within the artwork world deal with. His topic is the White working class that our celebrity-obsessed artwork world has largely forgotten or denigrates. I discover it fascinating that Bollinger is the one one of many artists I discussed who has by no means had a museum present in New York.
Matt Bollinger: Station continues at François Ghebaly Gallery (391 Grand Road, Chinatown, Manhattan) via Might 27. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.