Matthew Best

My next show, opening next week at Las Manos Gallery (http://www.lasmanosgallery.com/), Chicago. Four new paintings (http://mjbest.squarespace.com/paintings/paintings-2008-to-present/) will be on display. They are part of a new series I have been working on, a meditation on balance; physical and mental.

Half Moon IV, 2011. 18 by 18 inches. Acrylic on panel

     This series of paintings aims to use the vocabulary of painting to
find new ways of depicting the body, or more accurately, being a body;
one that is subject to internal and external forces, desire, pain and
pleasure. Shapes and colors within the paintings alternate between
conflict and unity, push and pull, support and instability. The
inspiration for this work has been my study of yoga which has deepened
and expanded my awareness of my body, both positive and negative. The
title of the series is an English translation of a Sanskrit name of a
yoga position, Ardha Chandrasana, a challenging pose in which the body
is precariously balanced on one arm and leg of one side of the body
while the other half of the body is extended upward and outward. It
requires great mental focus and physical strength to maintain the
pose, if one of these elements is missing, you fall. These paintings
strive to achieve this same balance. The body is represented
metaphorically as an awkward and complex structure.  Varying weights
of color, shape and line balance against one another; removal of any
one element would result in the collapse of the painting. The body is
also depicted as a particular kind of space. This space exists
in-between the micro and macro, natural and artificial and of the
interior (the mind) and exterior (the body and/or landscape). Layers
alternate between an opacity that obscures and a revealing
translucency.  Some shapes are completely hidden; other shapes are
more deeply embedded in the picture plane, exposed by scrapped and
sanded the painting down.  In this way, the conflicting spaces are
collapsed into one another.

Half Moon III, 2011. 18 by 18 inches. Acrylic on panel