Michael Matos is a Bronx based artist whose work is a cacophony of broken dreams, mocked machismo, carefully nurtured narcissism, and bad ideas executed with intoxicating gusto. Matos’ vision is at once overly-familiar, whimsical, and disturbing. it is unflinchingly honest and brutal in its portrayal of what happens to the child god-ego when the stark emptiness of adulthood is shoved down its throat. choking on a myriad of phallic visions coated in cotton candy, splattering images that speak of imaginary friends that have grown quiet. the use of soft pinks, purples, baby blues, and mellowed out greens invoke Saturday morning cartoon innocence while stenciling out sexually-obsessed themes of death and decay, always in the process of mourning a childhood not quite yet lived out.
The goal of this project was to explore the transformation of Michael’s work based on analog video synthesis, 3d modeling, and textiles into the realm of print and paper. Michael’s work exploits the artifacts and limitations of those mediums to mine the beauty in their inherent flaws.
Michael signing prints.
The use of photopolymer etching plates allowed Matos to build hypercomplex worlds of subtle tone and textural shifts with incredible fidelity often lost with other means of reproduction.
Utilizing the four-color, halftone process of CMYK allowed Matos to reinterpret the haunting beauty of CRT screens and their atomic fragmentation of color.
The use of laser cut wood blocks allowed him to meld the simple beauty of the grain into his compositions, utilizing its geometry to amplify the internal geometry of his work.
