The end of figuration is Mathieu’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe and focuses on a series of new paintings and a site-specific fabric installation reaching through the centre of the gallery. The artist’s mixing of mediums across painting, ceramics, and fabric is underpinned by a provocation: how might we conceive the end of figuration within art making, such that we see in a work only what we wish to find? In posing this question, he simultaneously highlights art’s inevitable failure to capture reality alongside its potential to be an illuminating vehicle for processing our past and present experiences.
Mathieu’s works can be seen as attempting to represent that which is often unrepresentable – the emotive, intimate, violent, and chaotic energies that charge our everyday; apparitions that crystallise and dissipate in the moments of our looking.
More on the exhibition here.