I'm grateful to announce that my work will be up concurrently in three excellent group exhbiitions.
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Chromatic Vigils / Low Tides
Curated by The Sphinx Northeast
Upstate Art Weekend
Hudson Opera House, August 27-29
Jesse Bransford + Lorenzo De Los Angeles, Jaqueline Cedar, Juliet Jacobson, Alessandro Keegan, Matt Jones, Jac Lahav, Alex McQuilken, Paola Oxoa, Max Razdow, Dana Sherwood
"At such a time of great tides I go down to that threshold of the sea world. ... There I have known dark caves where tiny sea flowers bloom and masses of soft coral endure the transient withdrawal of the water." -Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea
My colored pencil was blue and I thought of the low tide with its periwinkles, washashore knowledge, shells and revolving pebbles, dreaming weeds and wind-driven animals. My colored pencil became orange and the sun shone across my paper, a small field of vision. I managed to think of everywhere I went on maps where trees doubled themselves along the water's surface. My colored pencil turned dark green, like seaweed entangled in a current close to the shore, and I felt as though I was floating, unrooted. My colored pencil switched to red and I confronted the sky, hunting for anything that could be found, until the act of searching became a muscle in my own fingers. Countless stories of seeing you in my memory were enough to persuade tangible, quick pictures to freely rise and sink, camouflaged by cycles of meaning, until I caught sight of an intertidal rock to wait in hiding.
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The Catskills Presents: Heavy Show at Spring Break Art Show, New York.
September 8 - 13, 2021
Curated by Leonard Reibstein.
Including work by: Anton Bashkin, Sam Bornstein, Matt Jones, Eri King, Jesse Li, and Leonard Reibstein.
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Known Unknowns with the Studio Archive Project, online, Curated by Mepaintsme.
A willingness to embrace the unfamiliar lies at the heart of an artist’s evolution; experimentation can, in some cases, result in a shift in practice, parallel bodies of work or a singular piece of great power. Known Unknowns features 17 artists who consider these new territories, creating art that challenges expectations, and points to new directions lingering just beyond the periphery.
Including artists: Uwe Henneken, David Humphrey, Penny Davenport, Robyn O'Neil, Elliot Green, Paul Waak, Chris Lloyd, Aurélie Salavert, Nick Aguayo, Meg Atkinson, Robert Kraiss, Matt Jones, Jason Thompson, Aleksandra Waliszewska, Scott Daniel Ellison, Kevin McNamee-Tweed, and Adam Novak.
From the PR:
Matt Jones’ paintings and drawings use imagery rooted in the real world to create an environment of his own making that evokes a sense of magic, fantasy, and storytelling. In this peculiar piece, Mischief, we see the artist breaking out of the picture plane to produce a sculptural scene that might be best enjoyed by a hookah-smoking insect or family of Gnomes. In his previous experiments with sculpy, Jones allowed the material’s rawness to remain visible, but in Mischief, the artist adds his keen sense of color and mark making to create an object that expands on his playful interplay of reality and imagination.
Jones has had one or two person shows at Galerie Jerome Pauchant (Paris), Freight + Volume Gallery (New York), Horton Gallery (Berlin), Castor Gallery (New York), The Richard Massey Foundation (New York), Bleecker Street Art Club (New York), and Buia Gallery (New York). He has participated in NADA Miami (The Hole, New York), Spring Break Art Fair (Old School, Brooklyn), Miami Project (Driscoll Babcock, New York) and a solo presentation at Art Brussels (Bodson Gallery, Brussels). His work has been displayed in group shows at Robert Miller (New York), Anonymous (Mexico City), Driscoll Babcock Gallery (New York), ADA Gallery (Richmond, VA), Dorfman Projects (New York), Tibet House (New York), The Varsity (Brooklyn), Galleri Geo (Bergan, Norway), Grey East (East Hampton, NY), The Artbridge Drawing Room (New York), Gildar Gallery (Beverly Hills, CA), Fiebach Minninger (Cologne), Exit Art (New York), and The Hole (New York). He has done performances with Anonymous (Mexico City), Artist Space (New York), and Creative Time (New York).
Matt Jones attended the Yale University School of Art—Norfolk on an Ellen Battell Stoeckel Grant (2001), received a BFA from Cooper Union (2002), and recently completed an MFA at Hunter College (2021). In 2007 he founded Puppy American, a small independent press which publishes artist books, zines, poetry, and organizes exhibitions, focusing on collaboration. He lives and works in New York City.