Contents of a Cabinet
I first exhibited with Gay Street Gallery in spring 2017 showing twenty-two still life paintings of primarily workshop items. This exhibition, featuring less stereotypically masculine objects, reveals explorations using a broader more chromatic palette. Although my interests are broad, and each painting is a unique exploration, the statement I wrote for my debut exhibition with the gallery still holds true and I present it here:
Vessels
I’ve been a studio painter for many years. Making paintings from the objects in my studio and the various lights that pervade it is an endless and enjoyable puzzle. My paintings are formalist constructions but are not necessarily arranged. The compositions are found as I spend time in the familiar spaces of my studio environment. The basement studio in which all of these paintings have been made is in a working class neighborhood near the recently closed Bethlehem Steel Plant in Sparrows Point Maryland.
These paintings are of old bottles, archaic household objects, and leftovers from a once vibrant homeowner’s workshop. They were here when I moved in eleven years ago. Dust and disorganization obscure the objects. Even when the objects are clearly defined their meanings may be lost to our current generation. In an age when so many answers are at our fingertips, I marvel at what seems to be a disconnection with our recent past. What messages lay inert in these objects? What was the pervasive ideology of those “children of the depression” which once lived in this house and worked in this workshop? How did they treat materials and resources? What did they consider wealth and abundance? As we collectively consider the notion that American progress may not be a given: What can we learn from our not-so-distant past?
Bio
Matt Klos is a recipient of three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council (2016, 2012 and 2008). His work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions including the Prince Street Gallery in Chelsea, NY in 2011. He was awarded first place in the Bethesda Painting Awards in 2007 and received an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2001. Klos currently teaches drawing and painting full-time at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, MD and has served as a guest lecturer/critic at various institutions including the New York Academy of Art, Towson University, and the University of Missouri. He is a member of the collective Perceptual Painters, www.perceptualpainters.com and Zeuxis, www.zeuxis.us. He resides in Baltimore Maryland with his wife and children.
