Art opening tonight features collages by Matt Gonzalez

Does anybody in this neighborhood even remember Matt Gonzalez anymore? He was all we talked about for one three-month period most of a decade ago.

In any case, he’s a lawyer and political figure and stuff, but he also makes collages with found scraps. We saw some of it a couple years back. Good stuff!

Tonight at 6:30 is the opening of a new show at a.Muse called Scissors vs. Brush: Collage by Matt Gonzalez/Paintings by Tom Schultz. Full press release after the jump:

Scissors vs. Brush: Collage by Matt Gonzalez/Paintings by Tom Schultz

a.Muse welcomes politician and artist  Matt Gonzalez and veteran painter Tom Schultz for a two man show honoring their friendship and the relationship between their art. A public reception for the artists will be held on Thursday, April 28th, 2011 from 6:30 to 9:00 pm.  Musical performance by Charles Gonzalez & the Stereo Glitter.  Admission is free. The exhibition runs through May 30th.

Although Gonzalez creates in paper and Schultz with paint, the small, intimate pieces featured in this show will highlight their similar use of hard edges and bold colors.  While Schultz’s pieces have a bold, colorful geometric consistency, Gonzalez is as versed in color as he is in subtle shades of white, resourcefully using every bend and turn of his found objects to “draw” his curves and lines. In the end, this show is about the harmony created within a visual conversation between two old friends.

While Schultz’s pieces have a bold, colorful geometric consistency, Gonzalez is as versed in color as he is in subtle shades of white, resourcefully using every bend and turn of his found objects to “draw” his curves and lines.

Paul Occam has said that “Gonzalez’s primary palette is stuff that other people throw away. The works themselves are meditations on value, meaning and social norms. They are composed of images and discarded packaging, the disambiguation of old meanings through minor resurrections of color, compositions and forays into textures and curiosity.”

Schultz approaches his work as a relationship–hard edges meeting more gestural images. This creates a dynamic tension, evoking a casual sensuality and simple elegance.

“I believe the final impact of a work of art should be a felt experience;” says Schultz, “that is to say, an emotional one, without which it is nothing more than an intellectual exercise.”

Schultz was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1939. Basically a self-taught artist, he studied privately with Charles Bunnell in Colorado in the 1950s. He arrived in New York in 1959, at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and met artists connected with the New York School of painting.

Gonzalez first showed at a.Muse in 2006 with friend and painter Felix Macnee. Since then, he has shown at numerous Bay Area galleries, including Lincart, the Backroom at Adobe Books, and Johansson Projects.

Lori Shantzis, Director
a.Muse art gallery & meeting place
614 Alabama St. 

 

 

 

8 Responses to “Art opening tonight features collages by Matt Gonzalez”

  1. “He was all we talked about for one three-month period most of a decade ago.”

    That was before he decided to run interference for the Republican’s bitch, Ralph Nader, during the presidential election.

  2. MrEricSir says:

    The contents of Matt Gonzalez’s recycling bin is considered art?

    • YAR! says:

      How does that work? If this is the best example available (and I assume it’s not the worst) why the FUCK would I click through???

    • YAR! says:

      If I could I would delete the previous comment and replace it with “and not just his cans and bottles” but, such is life.

  3. Think_for_me says:

    “Good stuff!”

    I love sarcasm.

  4. Generik says:

    I voted for Matt over Gavin back in the day, but I’m sorry, that is just ugly with a capital F.

  5. Gypsy Taub says:

    I really admire Matt. He is fucking amazing. He pissed a lot of people off in the war-mongering corporate cock-sucking White House and they hired a lot of agents-provocateurs who go around posing as regular people. It looks like they have visited this site as well. It is probably one person with multiple accounts, all these shitty comments surely sound like they came out of the same head stuck far up the ass.