Station by Matt Bollinger seen at François Ghebaly

 Station by Matt Bollinger seen at François Ghebaly

Written by Ariel Rich

Matt Bollinger is a contemporary figurative painter. I went to see his work for the first time the other day and left with the conviction that he sees it. His paintings are not just about people, they are about the way our visual reality is just a puzzle our eyes complete. His application of paint is a constant weaving back and forth of paint layers and you are constantly drawn into questioning this section of underpainting used as the highlight on a figure. Light is literally rendered through the thickness of the paint, and I admire this technique. 

He works in acrylic and flashe paint, a feat: to make a painting feel alive with nonporous paints. Oil is very porous. Bollinger’s figures feel alive, but they are alive even though they are composed with a series of awkward and unnatural shapes. A very rectangular highlight, as seen on Stoop, which is a painting of a woman in shadows smoking on her stoop, is striking because she feels alive and human, but the shapes and colors in the piece feel abstract and non representational. 

His twenty minute stop motion, Between the Days, playing in the back room is the ultimate flex. Bollinger is freely playing with our sense of reality, fluctuating between what could be a Diebenkorn abstract grid or a car driving down the highway. He is masterful with translating visuals in an honest to the shapes we see way. 

The eyes are what makes it: that is the soul.