CHICAGO— Volume Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with Christy Matson, Haptic, opening May 14th from 5-8PM, Chicago, IL.
“My experiences, both psychological and physical, of making an all-encompassing unstable paradise home, are unique but also collective and part of larger external mythologies.”
The practical nature of Matson’s weaving process – constantly shifting between the micro and macro scale of a piece – run parallel with the themes explored in the sixteen weavings that comprise the pieces in Haptic. Shifting from one scale to the other, and the meditative and methodical experience of weaving line by line, Matson questions how her immediate surroundings (home, studio, yard) relate to a larger communal experience (street, neighborhood, city). Her interest in ideas of home is grounded in how women’s creativity is often characterized as domestic.
Compositional and other formal choices are informed by Matson’s unique vision moving beyond the physical to the psychological; interpretations of the specific tonal qualities of light, to resilient vegetation amidst the predicament of unstable environmental conditions. Using color-field painting and geometric abstractions as touchstones, Matson essentially “paints” these woven pieces to appear as effortless, gestural brushstrokes. Through Matson’s chosen medium she continues her sympathies to broad feminist concerns and finds a home in the gendered and marginalized status of weaving.
The materials used include naturally dyed wool from a rug factory in Nepal and leftovers from textile mills in the southeast United States. As complicated as the notions of self, the variance found in each piece is literally woven line by line, providing an afterimage of Matson’s life and process that elicits a profoundly emotive response.
“It is a practice that operates on the outer limits of the art world and that is a space I’m comfortable inhabiting.”
