Kopeikin Gallery is pleased to present “Processing: Beth and the Alternatives” by Matthew Swarts. An opening reception will be held Saturday, March 7th from 6-8PM. The works will be on view through April 18, 2015.
The cliché that time heals all wounds might be true, but, for Matthew Swarts, after a painful end to a long-term relationship, the passing of time only created a sense of confused detachment, especially when looking at his old photographs.
So Swarts decided to use those images to process the end of the relationship, creating his series “Beth.” In Beth, slowly erasing his ex-girlfriend is a metaphor for loss, but it’s also about ownership. The original portraits were a collaborative process. Now that she’s gone, he doesn’t feel the same ownership and is remaking the photographs.
While working on “Beth,” Swarts started a new relationship and so began a second series, “The Alternatives.” In The Alternatives, the blurred, obscured images are a metaphor for the uncertainty and complexity of forging a new relationship. Although emotions are strong at the dawn of a new romance, there are nagging questions about whether things will work out.
Both use images he has collected online for more than a decade-including optical illusions, children’s illustrations, maps, and even school papers. Swarts mixed them up to create unique patterns and then layeres those patterns over the collection of images from his present and everyday life.
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“The fun part is getting lost along the way, abandoning whatever strategy I thought was going to work, and just allowing some mistake and randomness to generate new ideas.”
– Matthew Swarts
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Kopeikin Gallery 2766 S La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90034, info@kopeikingallery.com
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