Simon Mathers: You Are Underground Event

Gianni Manhattan is pleased to present the first solo show in Austria by British artist Simon Mathers (*1984).

In his latest series of works, Mathers proposes that representation creates a fictional space capable of infesting the visible realm and that the distinguishing lines between internal and external images are soft and blurred.

Overhanging aluminium bars wind their way through the space. At the end of these intrusions polished stainless steel oblongs reminiscent of rear view mirrors are mounted. Their highly reflective surface catches and reflects glimpses of paintings and outlines of bodies. These mirrored images appear like specters floating through the gallery, deepening the plane of sight and probing at the perimeter of our presence. They enter our realm of thoughts and visions, laying bare any constructed image as fallacy.

Mathers new works conjure simultaneously our reflection, an external image, our projection. He visualises our formless continuous stream of consciousness and ponders the ambivalence of our core. When words are unable to transcend the gap between speeding desires and images, how can this shell maintain it?s composure? How does chaos contain itself?

A paranoid, voyeuristic moment as these youthful, cartoon like visions create uncanny moments of understanding, moments of pausing and a realisation that this feeling isn?t a solitary failing but a universal condition.

Simon Mathers, born 1984 in London, lives and works in London, UK. He received his MA in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London. Recent exhibitions include Beyond The Trees at Canopy Brussels; Human Condition at The former Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center, Los Angeles; Silleteros at Kinman Gallery, London; FOLLY at the Dunmore Pineapple, curated by Emalin; Rare Collisions of Purpose at Boetzelaer Nispen Gallery, Amsterdam (all 2016); The Funnies at MOT International, Brussels (2015).