Matthew Bourbon’s current exhibition at Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Where Sameness and Difference Meet, reflects a journey shaped by both personal history and a dedication to exploring the complexities of painting. Growing up in a family where art was a central part of life, Bourbon was influenced early on by his mother and uncle, both painters, as well as by his surroundings. These formative experiences laid the groundwork for his approach to art, emphasizing the importance of objects and their impact on our lives.
Here, Bourbon discusses the evolution of his work, from early figurative scenes influenced by film stills and advertising photographs to his current focus on abstract, elemental forms. He also reflects on the influence of his time in New York, where figures like Jerry Saltz and his experiences in Chelsea’s galleries helped to clarify his artistic vision. Now based in Texas, Bourbon considers how the local art scene and his teaching position at UNT have shaped his practice.
PATRON (P): Growing up in a family where your mother and uncle were painters, how did their work and the environment they created influence your early interest in art? Did their style or approach shape your initial views on painting?
Matthew Bourbon (MB): Watching art being made and having family members who were interested in aesthetic histories positively impacted me as a young person. Aside from being painters, my mother was also an interior designer, and my uncle owned an antique shop. This attention to the creation, arrangement and display of objects, as well as the concern for how art objects influence our lives is deeply fixed in my DNA. As I grew up, I exhibited natural inclinations toward drawing. Because I had family members who valued art, I was never discouraged as a young child or later when I pursued my love for art as an undergraduate at UC Davis. I should also note that my father is an Electrical Engineer and worked many years in Silicon Valley; some of the more precise moments in my paintings likely come from his temperament.
P: How did your time at the School of Visual Arts in New York influence your work? Can you talk about how figures like Jerry Saltz and your experience in Chelsea’s galleries helped to clarify your artistic vision?
MB: New York City is an incomparably rich environment for young artists. Being in the city allowed me to see a huge range of exhibitions every month. I also visited all the arts institutions and attended the constant rotation of lectures happening at the universities and art schools. At SVA everyone was dedicated to their art practice and there was such diversity of work that I found my time there invigorating and filled with healthy challenges.
Jerry was a kind of guru to young students, taking us to shows in Soho and Chelsea, exposing us to a wide range of artists, and basically being a cheerleader for our varied practices. He like many of the other teachers were earnest about the importance of art—It was clearly integral to their personal and professional lives. I understood this dedication, having seen it as an undergrad working with Wayne Thiebaud, Roy DeForest, and Squeak Carnwath. During my time in graduate school, I quickly discovered that I had found my place in the world—even while I was uncertain how I’d sustain my artistic life. In retrospect I mark those years as the true beginning of my life as a serious artist.
P: Your work has evolved from using fragments of film stills and advertising photographs to more abstract, elemental forms. Could you walk us through this evolution and explain what prompted these changes in your approach?
MB: For many years, during and after grad school, I worked with old photos and fragments of images to stitch together mostly figurative scenes that were pregnant with a suggestion of narrative. I was then, and am still now, curious about the complexity of how images speak or mumble toward something only partially sensible. Interpreting and “understanding” artworks never fully captures what an art object is or can become through our interaction. Art is a meeting point where artist and viewer co-create. This inherent vagueness and flexibility were important to me and became central to how I navigated life in the studio.
At any rate, while in New York I was taking photos of old films—screwball comedies and some film noir etc. to mine for imagery. When I had the photos processed, they would come back to me with color halos and what for most consumers would be unwelcome visual artifacts in the photographs. These scratches and cloudy hazes intrigued me; I quickly thought of them as actors in the scenes I was creating, and I incorporated the idea of “abstraction” as an active and meaningful player amongst the figures and objects I was depicting. I was deeply curious about how the patterns interrupted easy readings of my paintings. This notion of “abstraction” as a central, often mysterious force, remains fundamental to my current work.
P: Since moving to Texas, have there been any significant shifts in your artistic practice or conceptual focus? How has the Texas art scene, with its more accessible and open gallery system, impacted your work?
MB: Over the years, I’ve found a general friendliness and supportive nature to the Texas art scene. That openness combined with my teaching position at UNT have helped solidify Texas as my home base. It has allowed me to follow the whims of my studio practice without having to obsess over an ever-shifting art market. Once I moved here from NYC, my work generally developed along the trajectory set during graduate school. But in the past eight years my concerns have shifted away from overt representations of figures in complex narrative scenes. The retelling is likely too long, but in a nutshell, I lost faith/interest in the reliance on an implied story in my paintings. At some point it all felt too clever. I wanted something more elementary. In this shifting period, I reimagined what the paintings were, first through hundreds of drawings. This activity led to my current work which I still think has the flavor of my earlier paintings, but with a very different directive.
P: Your paintings often feature ambiguous vignettes and abstract forms that challenge the viewer’s perception. What draws you to create work that exists in a state of “not knowing”? How do you balance narrative with abstraction in your paintings?
MB: I believe the state of not knowing is where everything good comes from. When we think we “know”, and are certain of our rightness, we are closed down to the possibility of error or are prone to miss something significant beyond our field of vision. The attitude found within a stance of not knowing is a humbler place that allows us to say: “I think this, but I could be wrong, and I’m prepared to reexamine how I might be limited in my commitments and assumptions.” This basic acknowledgement of human fallibility is linked for me to personal relations, politics, the ethics of behavior, and ultimately in a valuing of the other. This ethos became even sturdier in my paintings as I felt a necessity to have my meditation experiences integrated with what I did in the studio.
Essentially, I think all potent artworks are built upon a framework of not knowing. If an artist or artwork is too didactic or wants to message to me as viewer I am almost always bored by the partisanship. It leans toward propaganda or advertising. In my paintings I have insisted on incorporating cracks in the system, hopefully implying the work is more than one thing, or one viewpoint. That said, striking a balance between narrative understanding and abstraction is not something I fret over. I am like a bloodhound just following the scent of what feels vital. When I decided to let go of narrative figuration I did not give up on my interest in the body; the import of the human machine became a broader leitmotif, geared toward a philosophical wondering about all forms. Basically, I don’t want my paintings to exude a certitude about content or form, because that seems a false paradigm in art and in life.
P: In your recent work for the Cell Series, you mention thinking about fundamental ideas like sculpture as an object and architecture as a body. How do these concepts manifest visually in your paintings? Can you describe one of the works in this series and the thought process behind it?
MB: I suppose this all gets a little esoteric, but I have been thinking for the past eight years about the sameness and difference inherent in all objects. An industrial item, as example, feels like architecture at a different scale. The human body feels like the ecosystem of a large mountain. Abstraction is just Realism at a different proximity. The purposeful reduction of my paintings upon a basic centralized form constructed from component abstract bits and bobs is driven by my sense that all forms act as containers that embodying many things at once. I am not illustrating in a recognizable way, but instead I am trying to find forms that feel alive and worthy of their own existence. Sometimes the paintings I create feel a bit more like a head while other times they can tilt toward landscape. Through the process of painting, I often discover something and will direct the painting to thematic placeholders that largely remain in the subterranean content of my art—be that microscopic imagery, rock gardens, topiary, or brutalist buildings.
In my current show at Kirk Hopper, for instance, I have a small painting called Chest Bell. For me the central form felt related to a kind of mental breathing experienced during meditation as one notices the chattering mind insisting that one constantly narrate experiences, dreams, and fantasies. I wanted this painting to be a bit quiet in tone suggesting moments when the mind is opening, but still sending up trial balloons filled with ideas and feelings. I titled it Chest Bell for various reasons, including intimating how a bell that is rung is solid as an object, yet is also present as a momentary sound. I was also wondering about where we think the source of our being resides—is it the brain/head, the chest/heart, or elsewhere? I was even considering that the language “source of our being” might be a mistake in understanding how we actually exist. This meandering in and out of concern for the object and my fixation on philosophical questions loosely attaches to my act of making and creates temporary guardrails as I make choices in the studio.
P: How does your experience as a writer influence your own painting practice? Do you find that writing about art gives you a different perspective on your own work?
MB: I write about art to make sense of a practice outside my own, and in that process, I clarify my own concerns as an artist—thinking about how others make is a way to think about how I make. I offer assessments or assert claims about artworks as an act of trying to know the artist and delve into their principles more deeply. It feels like having a long intimate conversation, yet I am really only talking to myself!
Basically, I believe there should be a disclaimer on all arts writing that says, “this is a provisional interpretation.” As a writer I try to combine my decisions about what I think an artwork is doing with a healthy dose of “I could be wrong or perhaps I’m barking up the wrong idiomatic tree.” I also work to ground what I say in a deep act of looking. My goal is to make explicit for the reader the conversation I am having in my head about a particular artwork or exhibition. Having made paintings and written about art for over 25 years I’ve discovered artists along the way that I have a kinship with, as well as artists whose approach feels alien to mine. I am sure this impacts my work in innumerable ways. Everything we digest influences us. Exactly how those influences are present in my art feels a bit elusive. Whatever the impact, I think my studio practice and my writing life are characterized by a dogged willingness to recalibrate my efforts toward the essential things I value.
Matthew Bourbon: Where Sameness and Difference Meet at Kirk Hopper Fine Art on view through September 7, 2024. kirkhopperfineart.com