NEW YORK, NY.- Anna Zorina Gallery is presenting Matt Phillips’ solo exhibition Hold Tight Horizon Eyes. The show features the artist's latest paintings, which convey aspects of the world that are not readily visible yet reflect elements of time, tension, and rhythm. While these forces remain essentially invisible, their presence is ubiquitous. We encounter subtle hints of their existence in the rhythmic patterns of ocean waves or the graceful billowing of a curtain shaped by a once-distant wind. Musical notes mark seconds like an irregular and impulsive clock. For Phillips, painting serves as the ideal medium for exploring his interest in how time and light can be materialized.
His investigation into our relationship to nature is captured through abstract distillations characterized by flowing color fields and rhythmic applications of paint. Phillips employs timeless languages of color, texture, and form placement in his compositions of fractals and geometric shapes. His use of small, pulsing brushstrokes imparts a cadence and continuous motion that unites the picture plane and instills a dynamic rhythm into his static imagery.
Phillips utilizes a custom mixture of matte pigment and silica to build translucent layers that create an illusion of density and depth. This technique evokes a paradoxical sense of solidity and weightlessness. Beyond conveying intellectual and emotional responses, his paintings underscore the physicality inherent to the creative process. These artworks demonstrate the interplay of perception, thought, and response while embodying the tangible, tactile engagement of mixing, scraping, shaping.
Matt Phillips received his BA in Art History from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and his MFA in Painting from Boston University. His work has featured in solo exhibitions at The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; NBB Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL; The Fores Project, London, England; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; Direktorenhaus Museum, Berlin, Germany; One River Gallery, Englewood, NJ; Devening Projects, Chicago, Illinois. Group exhibitions include Orlando Museum of Art, Next Asia in Taiwan, The Pit in Los Angeles, CA; as well as two person show with Corydon Cowansage at Andrea Fiesta Fine Art in Rome, Italy. He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Phillips is also a curator, critic, and has been a professor of art at FIT, Mt. Holyoke College, and Hampshire College.
