Matthew Couper
Matthew Couper’s latest Las Vegas isolation painting ‘Brutal Group’, 2022, Oil on canvas, 70” x 57”/ 178cm x 145cm, courtesy of the © artist and PAULNACHE
Matthew Couper is an Aotearoa / New Zealand-born artist, now living and working in the USA. After a decade of painting detailed, highly symbolic paintings, his recent Isolation Paintings return to a more gestural figuration, reminiscent of paintings created early in his career.
From the middle of 2019, desert island landscapes, moody skies enveloped with plumes of smoke, eyeballs with decorative tears, nails and Malevich-like constructions inhabit the canvases. Modes of survival are presented in tools such as the fire-starting bow drill and the ominous shark fin in the surrounding sea. Constructions provide shelter.
Installation view of Matthew Couper’s ‘Isolation Paintings’ debut at Tauranga Art Gallery, New Zealand. Photo courtesy of TAG, BOP © the artist & PAULNACHE.
“The bigger picture is about survival … the Social Isolation phenomenon is prevalent in a time where the world population is at its highest ever; questioning how we live, or don’t live in relation to others and false senses of security - not ready for slight shifts in the environment or other chaotic factors in society. With my new paintings, I’ve started off with the term ‘desert island’ to tie where I live now in the Mojave with where I come from in Aotearoa/New Zealand - especially in a world of pandemic peril - the term ‘Desert Island’ reconnecting my two worlds in paint.”
Although Couper now lives in the Mojave Desert, he seems to be looking back to the seclusion and isolation of Aotearoa - especially in a post-Covid world - the term ‘desert island’ reconnecting his two worlds back together in paint.
A recent conversation between Matthew Couper and arts writer Marcus Civin covers the ideas behind and making of his Isolation Paintings.
Selected works & Exhibitions
The artist
The artist Matthew Couper painting ‘In Memory of Water’ in his old studio 811 S. 3rd Street Unit 6, Las Vegas, NV 89101, USA. Photograph courtesy of the © artist.
Matthew Couper’s practice over the past decade has appropriated aspects of western art history. Through these painterly investigations, he has discovered that history often repeats.
He has determined that the Modernist notions of originality held little interest for his practice. Couper uses the established narrative traditions of Spanish Colonial retablos and ex-votos to discuss the space between myth, religion and art politics.
Matthew Couper, In Memory of Water, 2017, Oil on loose canvas, 64” x 144” / 1625 x 3650mm, exhibited: ‘From Dust to Water’, Las Vegas 2017–18;
Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, 12 May to 1 July, 2018, Sydney, Australia.
Video
Matthew Couper was awarded the Nevada Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts FY20 Artist Fellow, watch and listen to him discuss the formal aspects of his painting practice from 2003 to 2020 in this short video.