Failing to seek shelter, they... 1999 (detail) Installed at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art [Enlarge in New Window]

Matthew Geller: Foggy Day

Email Matthew Geller at mbg@ix.netcom.com

Bio:

Matthew Geller is particularly drawn to overlooked environments, which can include anything from private imaginary worlds within brick walls to very public sprawling back alleys. Whether the work takes the form of sculpture, installation, public art or video, it is in these environments that he teases out small fragments of narrative by augmenting or amplifying the raw materials of a given place. In a recent piece, Foggy Day, he highlighted greasy spills, clouds from steam spewing pipes and meager vegetation with more fog, lush greenery and colorful rubber puddles. Daily life in the alley took on the form of temporary cinema influenced by everything from changing weather patterns to the changing cast of characters passing through. In most of his work he sets out to reorient the viewer; he asks them to engage with both what was always there as well as what might be.

Foggy Day was selected for the Americans for the Arts' "Year in Review—the Best Public Art of 2003." Matthew Geller has received grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation, among others. He is a past recipient of an American Academy in Rome Prize, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists' Fellowship. His work has been exhibited internationally and in the Whitney Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, The Kitchen, and on Public Television.

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Visual > Sculpture | The Built Environment | Environment | History | New York | 2000