Matten Vogel

Life Time – Paintings by Matten Vogel

Life is a glimpse, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a time of year. Experienced, rushed, plenty of time, a lot to do, felt good, didn’t feel good, alone, not alone, desperate and beyond hope, euphoric or contented, felt lonely or in good hands. All things imaginable. Time elapsing and becoming memory, dissolving and becoming a cloud along with other clouds – moving on.

Or into black dots. Every week a picture with dots, an image of the week. The weekly events taking shape. Something happens, causes interruptions – how long and in which form –afterwards, the patterns of dots modulate, changing constantly, gaps and/or moments of concentration arise, creating ever new patterns. Week by week. A minimal diary. (From 2013 to the present.)

Or entire years emerge on a flat surface, a field a day, the fields on a white background are filled in or not: a variety of colors, each month with a color of its own. Seen from afar, a digital model emerges: yes, no, one, zero, fixed colors, nebulous categories, and – seen up close – one window shows a painting, brush strokes, gestures turning into surfaces. Surprisingly, some fields have been painted over repeatedly: life in layers of color, a complete painting sitting there in a small field alongside other fields now seemingly forgotten. (2015 and 2016, naturally unfinished, because the year is not over yet.)

It’s life that decides the distribution of the surfaces. What kind of year was it for you, Matten?And: what kind of year was it for me?

Life seen through the glasses of this artistic temperament: discreet. Tender. Consistent. And upright, because you can’t paint over yesterday – and if you do, it is no longer true. (Giti Nourbakhsch)