Matthew Allen
Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore
In the 1970s, American artist Michelle Stuart took paper into the landscape, where she massaged soil and graphite into its surface, tracing over the uneven ground to catch its shadow. These scrolls reveal the texture of a site, a worn piece of ground that has taken shape over millennia. Her works have served as a point of departure for Matthew Allen’s recent graphite works presented in As a Surface Becomes a Space.
Graphite is a mineral compound. Its molecular structure is related to that of diamond. While diamond is the hardest of minerals and graphite is the softest, both are a form of carbon in a state of metamorphosis.
Mathew Allen’s paintings form an ongoing inquiry into the materiality of paint upon canvas and the fundamentality of painting itself: colour, medium and process. Purity of medium and the experience of colour form the kernel of the artist’s abstract approach.
Matthew Allen will be in Singapore from 8 to 15 October and will be available for interviews. Do let us know if you might be interested in an interview with him and if you are able to provide coverage for the exhibition.
