246 Editions is pleased to announce our fourth edition. On The Way Home by Matthew Langley
Matthew Langley was born in 1963 in Alexandria, Virginia and studied
at Virginia Commonwealth University and received a BFA from The
Corcoran School of Art in 1986. His work has been exhibited nationally
and is included in major collections such as Ernst and Young, DC
Commission for the Art and Humanities, The International Museum of
Collage, Assemblage and Construction. Recent exhibitions include The
District of Columbia Arts Center and Green Line Art Projects in
Philadelphia. Mr. Langley’s artwork has been covered in publications
such as Art in America, The Washington Post, and The Washington Citypaper among others. He lives and works in Falls Church, VA.
Matthew Langley, On The Way Home 2009, archival pigment print
Artist Statements
On Developing New Images. My
artworks link to a particular but unspecified presentation or location
which could be in physical or non-physical space. The artworks are
composed both as a response to the question of how one might produce
imagery for a particular kind of space, but also as work that is able
to stand up to a large variety of environments and presentations.
The
artworks come from a series of divergent strategies. One of building
and extending - the other of reducing and minimizing. These disparate
approaches are not a way to impose meanings on the work, but can be
viewed as a metaphoric crossroads. This crossroads is about extending
the relationship of these different approaches, while at the same time
allowing the viewer the liberty of time for further reading of the
work. The image making that comes from this strategic foundation will
be clear, concise and rational, while at the same time allowing for a
sense of community and/or contemplation to develop in and around the
artworks.
The artworks are not linear narratives, this allows
the element of time to be stretched or compressed to accommodate the
viewer. This flexibility to time as well as environment allows the
artwork to reveal itself in slower and calmer ways than an artwork that
is based only on the relationship of drama and detail of the forms
presented inside of it, while allowing those with a more compressed time line to react to the base elements of the composition and
painterliness of the overall approach.
This open ended approach is central to the artworks I create and allows them to be developed with a non-specific exactness.
February 2009
On Names. Titles
have become critical to my work. Primarily they re-establish a
connection to the visible world and hopefully trigger a series of
associations and ideas that are related between the artwork and the
connotation in the viewers awareness. I avoid the descriptive and
ordered approach (blue, or number 12, etc.) as well as using
“untitled”. I view titles as an approach to open the viewer to a
thought process that may influence the subject at hand. This could be
viewed as a shorthanded poetry or similar device that allows further
thought about or in connection to the artworks.
