MATT SELLARS - Parallax - New Sculpture

G. Gibson Gallery - PRESS RELEASE

April 27 - June 2, 2018

MATT SELLARS Parallax - New Sculpture

Artist Reception on Sat April 28, 3 to 5pm
International Sculpture Day

Matt Sellars was born and raised in Boise, Idaho in 1970, then moved to Washington state in 1982. The artist has been influenced by the intersection of geography and human endeavor of these areas. In 1988 Sellars moved to Seattle, Washington to attend the Cornish College of the Arts where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts, specializing in sculpture. Sellars has exhibited extensively in Washington as well as Idaho, Montana and Oregon. Matt Sellars’ work is included in the Microsoft Art Collection, Tacoma Art Museum, Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane, and numerous private collections. Formerly showing with Platform Gallery, this is the first solo exhibit with G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA.

Museum Installations and Projects include Fun. No Fun with Kraft Duntz at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, 2017; Knock on Wood, Bellevue Arts Museum, 2014; Critical Messages: Northwest Artists and the Environment, at the Boise Art Museum, ID, the Hallie Ford Museum, Salem, OR, and the Western Gallery, WWU, Bellingham, WA, 2010; Common Soil, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Sun Valley, Idaho, 2007.

Artist Statement - Matt Sellars
Parallax is the thought that an object viewed from multiple locations can appear differently from each perspective. I think that this applies not just to geography but also events in time or perceptions versus reality. I decided that I wanted the majority of this show to be made from the materials that I recycled from Fun. No Fun, an installation that was created with fellow artists Dawn Cerny, David Lipe and Dan Webb at the Henry Art Gallery in 2017, in which we were asked to transform the south gallery of the museum.

The materials I speak of are those used in the normal course of construction; materials such as Douglas Fir framing lumber and CDX plywood. We chose these materials for our show at the Henry because of their economy, but also for the connotation as everyday lent to the sense of urgency or pragmatism that we inhabit so naturally in our lives. I used these materials in Parallax as something of a filter through which to reflect upon thoughts and ideas that rose to the surface throughout the making of Fun.No Fun. Ideas regarding manipulation of space, the place of art both in society and within the institution, politics, democracy, civics, outrage, curation, culture, personality, collaboration, personal lives, the struggle to make a living, parenting, civilization versus wildness, wilderness versus development, construction techniques, craft versus deskilling, materiality, physicality and scale, to name more than a few.

Construction grade wood is a material that I work with in my everyday job as a carpenter, not one that I gravitate toward in my studio work. It has many irregularities and defects that become troublesome and lend their own influence over a concept. While I did attempt to select as few wood knots as possible, I made no attempt to eliminate them. Nor did I try to hide holes where fasteners had attached the structure of the installation together. Some of these holes needed to be filled with epoxy for structural purposes, but I wish for the viewer to reflect upon how the materials were first used to interpret and transform a large space; materials used to convey potentialities for successes and failures. And then to think of them in their current iteration of reduced scale and altered concept; a concurrent magnifying glass and megaphone for ideas born in collaboration and much that has transpired in life since - the parallax of then and now as well as materially and figuratively.