Biography
With quick, gestural brushstrokes, Matthew Chambers paints representational images inspired by pop culture, movies, and art history, as well as abstract works comprising layered strips of torn canvases rejected by the artist in making other works. For Chambers, the practice constitutes his method of processing image overload. His subjects, all rendered in a painterly style, range from a comical, boot-sporting, umbrella-toting cat, to a portrayal of two formally dressed women so intimate it leaves viewers feeling like they are intruding, to a homoerotic depiction of a man in boxers toweling another, nude man. Noting the characteristic threads trailing from the canvases, warped stretchers, and other flaws, critic Jeff Frederick writes in Art in America, “What Chambers has to say is too urgent, his passion too great, for him to get caught up in the niceties of facture. And roughness is part of the appeal.”