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CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY
513 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
Telephone: (212) 929-5949  


​Presents


Matthew Sleeth: Rules To Live By

Oct 27th, 2016 to Dec 3rd, 2016


Picture

Rules to Live By installation view


Picture
I WANT A PONY
Steel, Light Globes, Paint
26 x 52 x 4 inches | 66 x 132 x 10cm

Picture
YOU GET THE ART YOU DESERVE
vinyl and PVC street sign
31.5 x 19.75 inches | 80 x 50cm

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Happiness Equals Expectation Over Achievement
Steel, Neon, Paint
9 x 80.5 x 4 inches | 23 x 204 x 10cm

Matthew Sleeth
Historically, photography has been dominated by two key philosophies: capturing candid narratives or creating constructed images. Matthew Sleeth’s studio practice holds a tension between these two positions; the viewer is not quite sure if they are looking at documentary 
snapshots, or scenes that are complete digital fictions created so convincingly they could depict reality.

“I want the viewer to be able to see my departure from the traditions of 
orthodox documentary,” Sleeth explains. “I want to engage with my times – to make works of art that grapple with social and political ideals.”
His singular vision is one of dynamic design, uncanny juxtapositions, and telling but subtle detail. What raises the work above the merely interesting subject matter is Sleeth’s enthusiasm to engage with the beautiful – a recently 
much mistrusted quality in contemporary art. Disillusioned with the downward spiral of postmodern intellectualism, Sleeth seeks to engage with the world through the language of popular culture, advertising, fashion and, especially, design.

Above all, the Artist’s works are about the social, political, and cultural landscape and those who inhabit it. “I am interested in speaking about people and places in a way that informs a broader reading of the subject as part of a cultural group and also as an individual,” he says. “The work itself is about the viewer. There is always a political and social undercurrent, but at its 
root there is a creation of a mood or context and what the viewer gets out of that experience. It’s about trying to find new visual languages; creating order out of chaos . . . I’m very much into creating order out of things.” An Australian artist who lives and works between Melbourne and New York, Sleeth’s aesthetic has become conceptually driven across a range of media, including photography, video, sculpture, print making, and public installation.

​The medium he utilizes changes with the message of each project, and everything is guided by the overall concept. His work can best be understood as new media seen through the prism of photography, with a unifying aesthetic that explores what photography has become today. Mass-produced images are present in virtually every aspect of our daily lives; Sleeth experiments with new techniques and media to create fictitious scenarios of real-world possibilities that shatter the photographic way of seeing that we have become conditioned to expect.  

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