Critical
Analysis:
Matthew Stollar's
work springs from photographs taken whilst in Poland in 2001. The paintings
hang not as individuals but as a physically connected group offering a
visual plane that has associations with public murals and tapestry.
However the
public mural is subverted and the figures portrayed disintegrate into
rigorous paintwork and disquieting text. One feels that Stollar's work
acts as a mixing bowl the ingredients of which he pulls from the everyday
and the chance effects of the painting process. However behind his stoic
salute to the human condition lies a pathos-ridden desperatism, a frank
questioning that leaves the viewer feeling uneasy.
Stollar is
very interested in people's belief systems. This questioning is apparent
not only literally in the work but is mirrored in the aggressive deconstruction
of the autonomous painting.The whole gallery is over run by a clearly
obsessive desire to express and yet on one painting are the words 'I live
on the moon'; maybe just a figure of speech or perhaps the true belief
of a patient.
Stollar offers
heroic paintings that draw liberally from the past century's painterly
vocabulary. Some of the problems he deals with aesthetically could almost
be called classical problems. In the melting pot of his arena it is as
if he has drawn in a strand from every area of painterly interest and
left them all dissected in the visible inner workings of his painting
process. Somehow this jumbling together of disparate enthusiasms work
together and they produce a style and outlook that is both epic and powerful
and also comic and colloquial.
One feels
the journey of his life and the journey that his painting is taking are
one and the same. If this first garbled yet strong first offering is anything
to go by it seems that Stollar is headed in an interesting direction.
Matthew
Stollar
Middlesex University : BA Hons(June 2002)
For
sales, commissions and to send comments to the artist.
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