All Visual Arts (AVA) Hosts a Major Retrospective of French Artist Charles Matton

Written by Cynthia Broderick Monday, 12 September 2011 23:53

London.- AVA (All Visual Arts) is proud to present the first major retrospective of French artist Charles Matton. Thirty eight undiscovered boxes will be installed in Kings Cross. From 1985 until his death in 2008, Charles Matton created mixed media works  which defy easy  classification. Theatrical, atmospheric, meticulously constructed, his small scale interiors are housed in see through boxes with glass fronts. "Charles Matton: Enclosures" is on view from September 8th through October 7th. The miniature spaces represent real world interiors and revisited memories from Matton’s own life, as well as other recognizable places. The artist also fabricated interiors from his imagination, intended to recreate cherished sensations, such as the loneliness felt in an abandoned hotel corridor or the intimacy of a forgotten and disused library.

Matton and his assistant painstakingly handbuilt, painted and sculpted every visible detail to 1/7 scale, from fading wallpaper to broken light sockets. Some of  his  enclosures of  famous artist’s studios; such as Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti. They are such direct representations that viewing these  boxes is almost  like making  a  journey  through time. Matton reconstructed the room  in which Paul Bowles died as well as Freud’s  study, with his personal art collection displayed exactly as it would have been on his desk in 1910, lit by  the wintry  sun of  a February afternoon. As time passed, subsequent boites started to take on a more poetic quality. For the literal encounter to be complete for the viewer, the boxes needed to be not just how something looked on a particular day,but how they felt. To do this, Matton sometimes used one way mirrors and videos to add hypnotic optical illusions.  Poisson d’Or depicts a music room with a grand piano, on which is projected the ghostly image of  a  young man performing Debussy’s  Goldfish. The player is Matton’s son Jules, an accomplished classical pianist. Such effects seem derived from Matton’s experience in film making, that he always returned to. In New York University Club Library, Matton used double sided mirrors. These magic mirrors play with the involvement of the observer, who despite looking into a mirror within these miniaturised worlds, cannot see themselves.  These Vampire boxes were the last step to fully integrating the viewer.

All Visual Arts is an innovative commissioning agency launched in 2008 by Joe La Placa and Mike Platt, whose combined areas of expertise make a strong basis upon which to build a significant collection of contemporary art. La Placa and Platt work closely with their stable of artists, commissioning work that is often ambitious in both scale and in concept. Located in a 5,000 square foot warehouse in the heart of  King’s Cross, with high ceilings and expansive walls, the new space acts as an all encompassing showroom, office and storage space for the AVA team, the collection and the artists it represents: Reece Jones, Alastair Mackie, Kate MccGwire, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz and Jonathan Wateridge. Last October AVA presented Vanitas: The Transience of Earthly Pleasures”. This group exhibition was conceived and curated by La Placa and Associate Director, Mark Sanders and it included leading international artists such as Bertozzi and Casoni, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tim Noble and Sue Webster and Wim Delvoye in addition to new commissioned pieces by the artists who AVA represents. By promoting the artist’s works in this way, AVA acts as a platform for artistic dialogue and invites the public to engage with what we feel are some of the most dynamic and innovative artworks by artists living today. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://allvisualarts.org

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