La Petite Mort Gallery

MATTHEW STRADLING

‘YOUTH-WOUND’  / New Paintings

December 7 – 30, 2012 / Vernissage Friday December 7 / 7 – 10pm

STATEMENT:
For this exhibition at La Petite Mort Gallery, Matthew Stradling is presenting a series of eight close-up face portraits of attractive young men/boys, which are juxtaposed with four paintings of details of flesh-wounds. To complete the series there is a large-scale painting of the artist ‘up close and personal’ with one of the young men.

With these images, Matthew Stradling is drawing together images of innocence, desire, pain and ecstasy, the staple diet of so much religious iconography. These young men/boys become the haunted and pure youths that have historically inhabited the world of art and
literature; symbols of Spring and innocence, guardians of a new age, the forthcoming generation and of the Eden of childhood. The image of the youth still holds power in our accelerated consumer society as the prime target of advertising campaigns and the ultimate desirable commodity. As Quentin Crisp said power has been transferred into the hands of the young, in our time.

But what is it that is so alluring about the image of the Youth?

In these paintings, Matthew Stradling is evoking the mysterious power of youth: the un-blemished  skin; the eyes,clear and intent on the future; physically beautiful and self-assured in that knowledge. Yet he also questions whether this is all illusion. The youths have a vulnerability and discomfort in their gaze. These youths are ‘fresh’ and prone to psychological ‘wounding’. These works seem to ‘poke holes’ in our concept of the beauty of youth ; in truth, it is often a time of pain, which continues to smart thoughtout our adult lives.

For the artist, who is approaching his fiftieth year, these portraits are also a retrospective farewell to his own youth and acknowledgement of past trauma. This culminates in the final depiction of Artist and Youth literally ‘joining’ together, partially in carnal celebration and partially in exorcism of the passing time, a handing on of the ‘baton of power’ to the young. It is, as though the sexual act between Youth and Experience has become a way of dying to a transformed life, both feeding from each other ; painful, ecstatic and liberating.

BIO:

Much of Matthew’s work celebrates the sensuality of the human form – figures often luxuriating, nude, against lush decorative backgounds or sometimes frozen, naked, into empty fields of muted colour.The textures of flesh are captured with the use of layers of delicate colour and the sensitive rendering of light. The paintings often seduce the viewer with a dream-like flow of imagery, a careful attention to detail and an intense use of colour. However they can also challenge us with their serious intent, questioning ideas of sexuality, desire, fear, mortality, and loss. Although much of Matthew’s work depicts fantasies of wealth and splendour, it is not the luxury of a materialistic world that is being celebrated, rather the wealth of the imagination, where the mind is free to gather images from different eras, continents and mythologies, creating visions of beauty that seem to be haunted by their own perfection. In this way, Matthew’s paintings convey a certain melancholic yearning for lost eras and a child-like sense of wonder, underlaid with a knowing sense of humour.