Matt Macintosh: falsevoid
to
Kamloops Art Gallery 101-465 Victoria St, Kamloops, British Columbia V2C 2A9
Matt Macintosh, "Pe(l)t," 2015
video still
Kamloops–based artist Matt Macintosh’s video installation, falsevoid, explores the relationship between mysticism and culture, drawing on recent projects that address strategies for intercultural exchange and the role of signs, symbols and practices in relation to identities, cultures and discourses. For this project, Macintosh works within the parametres of The Cube, critically considering “the (white) cube” as a recurring motif in western modern art and architecture.
Macintosh draws on his own personal (and web browsing) history as a point of departure to explore problems and possibilities related to the way mystical “experience” is coded into practical and linguistic activities. Bringing together modernist practices, relics of contemporary culture and foundational cultural texts, falsevoid uses the language of instant gratification to speak to the long-haul game of self-realization. At times overwhelming, quiet, disturbing and funny, the work speaks to the inadequacy of cultural production alone as a vehicle for liberation and explores the losses and gains achieved by rendering the ineffable into signs, symbols and practices.
Currently Curator at the Kamloops Museum and Archives, in his artistic practice Matt Macintosh works with found images and objects, painting, video and sound to explore the effects of erasure, systematization and repetition on cultural canon materials as they relate to fundamental human experiences.