Matthew Monahan
26 Jul - 29 Oct 2007
Matthew Monahan
Installation view of MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan at MOCA Grand Avenue, 2007, photo by Josh White
Installation view of MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan at MOCA Grand Avenue, 2007, photo by Josh White
MOCA FOCUS: MATTHEW MONAHAN
07.26.07 - 10.29.07
Matthew Monahan (b. 1972, Eureka, CA) creates striking sculptures that are built from drawings, as well as fragments of smaller artworks made with disparate materials, including floral foam, beeswax, glitter, pins, Styrofoam, glass, and drywall. From these unlikely media, he builds freestanding, assemblaged sculptures within which hand-crafted characters—warriors, saints, slain heroes, and demons—seem to express heroic emotions ranging from jubilation to anguish. These figures serve as both icons and iconoclasts in a purposefully allusive narrative from a mysterious unidentified past epoch. Working simultaneously as both chronicle and summation of the artist’s creative processes, Monahan’s sculptures confront the formal issues inherent in figurative drawing and sculpture while addressing his artistic, personal, and political concerns. This MOCA Focus exhibition—Monahan’s debut solo museum presentation—brings together a decade of work never before exhibited in Los Angeles. MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan is curated for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, by MOCA Assistant Director Ari Wiseman and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan is made possible by generous endowment support from The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists and the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund to Support the Work of Emerging Artists.
Major support is also provided by a multi-year grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by David Hockney, John Rubeli, David Teiger, and Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson.
In-kind support is provided by BPM Magazine.
07.26.07 - 10.29.07
Matthew Monahan (b. 1972, Eureka, CA) creates striking sculptures that are built from drawings, as well as fragments of smaller artworks made with disparate materials, including floral foam, beeswax, glitter, pins, Styrofoam, glass, and drywall. From these unlikely media, he builds freestanding, assemblaged sculptures within which hand-crafted characters—warriors, saints, slain heroes, and demons—seem to express heroic emotions ranging from jubilation to anguish. These figures serve as both icons and iconoclasts in a purposefully allusive narrative from a mysterious unidentified past epoch. Working simultaneously as both chronicle and summation of the artist’s creative processes, Monahan’s sculptures confront the formal issues inherent in figurative drawing and sculpture while addressing his artistic, personal, and political concerns. This MOCA Focus exhibition—Monahan’s debut solo museum presentation—brings together a decade of work never before exhibited in Los Angeles. MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan is curated for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, by MOCA Assistant Director Ari Wiseman and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
MOCA Focus: Matthew Monahan is made possible by generous endowment support from The Nimoy Fund for New and Emerging Artists and the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation Fund to Support the Work of Emerging Artists.
Major support is also provided by a multi-year grant from The James Irvine Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by David Hockney, John Rubeli, David Teiger, and Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson.
In-kind support is provided by BPM Magazine.