MATJAMES METSON
A BETTER HOME FOR A QUIET WOLF
OPENING RECEPTION:
SATURDAY, MARCH 15 | 7 – 11 PM
Coagula Curatorial presents A Better Home for a Quiet Wolf, an exhibition of new work by acclaimed assemblage artist Matjames Metson. The gallery will hold an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, March 15 from 7-11pm at their location at 974 Chung King Road, in the historic Chinatown district of Downtown Los Angeles.
After a successful solo show at Coagula Curatorial in August 2012, Metson delves deeper into his affinity for discarded mementos/bric-a-bracs and on a larger collective scale than ever before. His intricate, labor-intensive application of layers and textures masterfully breathes life back into once forgotten objects. Despite being dislocated from their original context, photographs, matches, love letters, newspaper clippings, and other forms of utilitarian and personal effects are seemingly fated to meet, like a beautiful family tree of strangers. Their architectural presence, inspired in-part by sacred geometry and barn hexes, provides a literal and emblematic framework for these time capsules of frozen Americana.
The LA Times calls his work “intricate and ornate, filled with niches and doors and odd details, every surface worked over with care. It flirts with many of the traditional tropes of assemblage…it is the care that most distinguishes the work today: the sincerity, even tenderness, with which he treats his materials…(they) come with stories of their own, which he weaves into eloquent, finely wrought, 3-D compositions, no inch of which has gone bare or unconsidered..”
His aesthetic inclinations for assemblage began during his youth in the half-desolate town of Charlottesville in Upstate New York, and later found his way into the lively city of New Orleans, and then migrated out west to Los Angeles after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which was a cornerstone event in Metson’s life. With loss, Metson rebuilt. “While staying in the tradition of great assemblage artists like George Herms and Robert Rauschenberg, Metson has created something fresh, with survival as the key concept.” (Joseph Lapin, LA WEEKLY)
A Better Home For A Quiet Wolf is the latest chapter of Metson’s studio practice.
Metson currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively which include shows at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Coagula Curatorial, and the Miami Project Art Fair, and will be a part of a four-person group show at the UCLA’s Fowler Museum later this year. A Better Home for a Quiet Wolf is Metson’s second solo show at Coagula Curatorial and runs from March 15 thru April 12.