Bax-Catalogue-FOST 2010

8/7/2019 Bax-Catalogue-FOST 2010

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Credits

ArtWOrK / sKetCHesMatthew Baxwww.matthewbax.com

designCameron Lofthouse & Monica Placella

PHOtOgrAPHyArtwork: Soobin & HimPortrait: John Laurie

Printed ByPixel Tech, Singapore

FOST Private Limited65 Kim Yam RoadSingapore 239366

Telephone 65 6836 2661Facsimile 65 6836 7904E-mail info

@fostgallery.com

Website www.fostgallery.com

MAttHeW BAXis teXt CHeAting?


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MAttHeW BAX

1974: Born in Adelaide, Australia1977: Moved to Naracoorte, South-East of South Australia1988: Winner St. Peters College Art Prize1990: Winner St. Peters College Art Prize1990: Winner South Australian State Art Prize1990: Selected SSABSA Exhibition1990: Selected SSABSA Permanent Collection1989 - 1994: Casual Employment Christies, Adelaide1990 - 1994: Gallery Assistant - Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide1991 - 1994: Completes a Bachelor of Commerce Degree at Flinders University1989 - 1992: Painting in Melbourne1998: Moves to Germany, establishes Munich studio2001: Returns to Melbourne, establishes Richmond studio2007: Painting in Mnchen & Melbourne2008: Painting in Istanbul & New York

2008: Establishes Singapore Studio2009: Commences Masters of Fine Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore

sOLO eXHiBitiOns

2010: Hell Hyper In ation , ICA Gallery, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore2010: Is Text Cheating? , FOST Gallery, Singapore2009: My Life is an Open Book , FOST Gallery, Singapore2007: This Little Piggy Went to Market , Uber Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2006: Tiles , Uber Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2005: Waiting for Something to Happen , Uber Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2003: Un-Titled , Dickerson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2003: Madrid Wall Studies , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen, Germany2002: Sec. 101c , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen, Germany2001: Rolltreppe , NEU Ausstellungsraum, Hamburg, Germany2001: Espaa , Cornelia von Wagenheim, Frankfurt, Germany2000: Recent Paintings , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen, Germany1999: Subway , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen, Germany

grOUP eXHiBitiOns

2010: Dont Forget to Die! , The Gallery, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore2010: Pameran Poskad , Keyakismos, House, Singapore2010: Object , Space, Praxis Space, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore2009: Past Perfect , FOST Gallery, Singapore2009: NorthSouth , Gasworks, Melbourne, Australia2008: 1x1x1 , FOST Gallery, Singapore, Singapore2007: Southside Arts Project , Treasury, Melbourne, Australia2006: Melbourne Art Fair , Uber Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2005: Discovery , Gasworks, Melbourne, Australia2004: Paintings , Dickerson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2003: Melbourne Art Fair , Dickerson Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2001: Weis , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen, Germany1999: Mut Zur Farbe: Gelb , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen Germany1999: Mut Zur Farbe: Rot , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen Germany1999: Mut Zur Farbe: Blau , Marquardt Ausstellungen, Mnchen Germany

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is teXt CHeAting?

One of the rst introductions to structured education a child encounters iswriting exercises, where one is taught to trace the shape of a letter overthe dotted guide and then to practice by repeating the letter on the emptyline. Praise, stars, accolades are heaped onto tots with good penmanship.And so it begins: to be successful you have to stay within the lines,follow the path that has been set. God forbid the tail of your q strayswilly nilly two lines below.

That Matthew Bax, a tax accountant in a previous incarnation, foundedcritically acclaimed bars in Melbourne and Singapore and is a successfulartist in three continents, is paid testament that strayin g is a good thing,if not even better.

This is the second series of works Bax has created since relocating toSingapore 18 months ago. His rst titled My Life is an Open Bookbibliophilic in theme. Text in art no doubt blurs the line between graphicdesign and ne art. However approach Baxs works from a purely aestheticpoint of view and you experience the joy of spontaneous brushwork andfreedom of random splatters reminiscent of action paintings. Read thetext and you experience the wit of the artist, who simultaneously probes,questions and challenges the status quo.

And while the imagery of lined exercise books and index cards is somewhatold school, the tongue-in-cheek title is a decidedly contemporary referenceto modern day communication. The question posed in the title would not havemade much sense even a short a time as a decade ago. With text messaging,

irting need no longer be conducted face to face, instead feelings can beinstantaneously conveyed (or masked) with seemingly harmless emoticons,expressions made up of punctuation marks and indecipherable unless readsideways. And even if physical boundaries may never be crossed, the samecannot be said for emotional ones.

Blurred boundaries, crooked lines and words askew that is Life.

Stephanie Fong Director FOST Gallery, Singapore

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And As it gOes ...

... WitHOUt sAying

Beginnings are often fraught with anxiety and dread. Anxious that whatfollows must ful l that incipient vision of what-it-should-be. Dreadfulthat it nearly always isnt so. Beginnings are also transitory states 1 ,in the sense that what gets rst airing must often be re-examined andre-appraised in light of what follows. And yet, the kernel of what is tofollow must already be contained in that rst note ... rst line ... rstintonation ... rst mark. Or as what John Sallis had remarked in The Vergeof Philosophy : In order to begin, one must somehow know what, on the otherhand, one cannot, as one begins, yet know.

In encountering a blank canvas; a c lean sheaf of paper; a fresh screen; o r asilent audience, the idea of what is to be communicated is held in place bythreads of possibility. It gradually takes on a tangible form of language ;of composition; of passage; of materiality. And yet, these cumulative formsare, at best, tangible interpretations and not the idea 2 . And yet, again,these (tangible) forms must also emanate from the same source which gaverise to that (intangible) idea. In so many other words, it is an attempt tosay, the unsayable; speak, the unspeakable; to write, to draw, to paint, tomake sense of the un-sensible.

And yet if bordering on the unimaginable beginnings are made. - JohnSallis, The Verge of Philosophy

... in BetWeen tHings

And as sense is being made, the idea becomes increasingly and seeminglytangible. But never to the point of being an actual thing, but akin to ashape-shifting entity which traces out the boundaries and limits of whatit is and delimiting what it is not, by default. It is, perhaps, thisperennial confusion of what-it-is-not for what-it-is which results in amisplaced con dence in identifying or representing ideas. That con dencearises from a need to be certain of belief; of naming as boundariesshift and ambiguities mount.

If ceci nest pas une pipe , then it has to be something else. It must be as it cannot be just not, or non-sense. It is, perhaps, also a habit ofthought which seeks the tangible, grasps the recognisable, and discerns thetrue. It is a habit which builds a sense of exclusion albeit, momentarilybefore becoming entrenched as a habit of thought for the sake of knowing or believing.

Such con dence, being exclusive, would necessarily belie the primacy ofrevisions, rejections and erasures 3 . It is only by a constant turning andre-turning of frames of reference that ideas become sensible. It is not somuch a search for that perfect sense, or representation, but one of mappingthe (un-sensible) idea by delineating its multitude of shadows, traces,echoes which must necessarily exists in between (tangible) things.

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Y 2010Mixed media on wood30 x 60 cm

Right:Is It? (detail)2009Mixed media on wood152 x 122 cm

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...

With the trace, one discerns but is never certain. With the echo, one hearsbut cannot be sure of its trajectory or source. With shadows, one sees butincompletely. These are anxious modes of discernment which, not so muchas question the very basis of knowing but, point to the implausibilityof certitude. It is not an abdication of saying what it is but rather anacknowledgement of what it is not yet could be.

The not-yet-could-be thing becomes like a stain 4 : suggestive yet inconclusive;visible yet tentative; inscribed yet unnameable; is yet not. It is perhapsas stains that we can better understand thoughts or ideas as permeating,emerging, fading, accidental; or otherwise. As indelible not-things. And asthings go, they can only be said drawn, or painted, or ... in order tomake sense, yet again.

Lawrence Chin

1. When I was rst introduced to Matthew Baxs work, I was intrigued. It was plainly evident that Bax had tremendous store of commitment to the painted medium, even whenwe think of painting as somehow historical.When later introduced to Bax and speaking with him about his ideas in his work, I wasmore than intrigued. It came across as adeep-seated search for a sense of rootednessin our fragmentary world. When I was rstapproached to write for this exhibition, I was hesitant but relented as I thought I had to give form to what I had experienced incoming into contact with Bax his work and his ideas.

2. Baxs current series extends some of hisearlier concerns found in My Life is anOpen Book, which is driven by his continualdialogue with the need to understanding lifeand its myriad transformations. It is anattempt to make sense of the world around,much like jotting down lists and thoughtsonto pages or cards, often tinged with thepersonal hope that such acts of observationand recoding could somehow suf ce in drawing out the essence and mystery of living. Yetthe vigorous attempts at whiting out thetext, while leaving them marginally legible,serve as a reminder of the tension betweenthe tenuousness and tenacity of our meaning-making rituals or habits.

3. The tentativeness of inscribing onesthoughts is carried over into the deliberateuse of chalk marks in a number of Baxs new works. These marks, verging on the playful,bring to mind the obvious reference toformative early childhood years, which areoften times remembered in terms of emotionalstates rather than cognitive understanding.The displacement and uncertain relationshipbetween memory, emotion and thought becomeyet another indication of why we can never besure of what we think we know.

4. As an amorphous entity, what we know or see or hear is then constantly revised, not

for want of a de nite meaning, but in concertwith the acceptance that we can only know imperfectly. Bax exempli es this approach inhis visual thoughts.

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Right:Statement of Character 2010Mixed media on wood102 x 76 cm

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Time to Spare? 2010Mixed media on wood30 x 60 cm

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Statement in Progress2010Mixed media on wood30 x 60 cm

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Statement in Abstraction 2010Mixed media on wood30 x 60 cm

Left:Statement in Medium (detail)2010Mixed media on wood102 x 76 cm

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F is for...2010Mixed media on wood122 x 153 cm

Left:E is for... (detail)2009Mixed media on wood122 x 153 cm

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Ex Libris I 2010Mixed media on wood21 x 14 x 5 cm each (diptych)

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T 2010Mixed media on wood30 x 30 cm

Left:T is for... (detail)2009Mixed media on wood122 x 153 cm

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Ex Libris II 2010Mixed media on wood21 x 14 x 5 cm each (diptych)

Overleaf:H is for... (detail)2009Mixed media on wood

122 x 153 cm

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Q is for...2010Mixed media on wood76 x 102 cm

Right:Statement in Time II 2010Mixed media on wood102 x 76 cm

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P is for...2010Mixed media on wood76 x 102 cm

Right:Statement in Time I 2010Mixed media on wood153 x 122 cm

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M is for...2010Mixed media on wood76 x 102 cm

Left:I is for... (detail)2009Mixed media on wood122 x 153 cm

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O is for...2010Mixed media on wood76 x 102 cm

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N is for...2010Mixed media on wood76 x 102 cm

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Documents

Bax-Catalogue-FOST 2010