MATTHEW STONE

MATTHEW STONE JUST GETS 

BETTER AND BETTER.

Last night friends and I dropped in on Matthew Stone's Show

››EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE ›‹

@ La Scatola Gallery gallery in Shoreditch.
Ive been following this guy since the days of being 21 (& wild) and MYSPACE, when he and Gareth Pugh were squatting and putting on OWOWO! parties in east London.

(old myspace pic)

There are two things I liked most about the show.

The first his use of plywood. Apart from giving the images more substance to the eye, I liked the combination of  the natural, the industrial and the digital to create romantic depictions of bodies in unison. They reminded me of updated versions of renaissance paintings, fragments of something quite grand, where suddenly that age-old idea of  beauty takes on a dirty sense of humour whilst simultaneously keeping old and ageless. He says,

"Beauty is something that I commit to not understanding"

The second was the black and white photographs of naked bodies entwined. During the shooting process, Stone was in front of the camera dancing and painting on his subjects with lasers to make

UNCONDITIONAL COMMITEMENT TO SACRED LOVE

Off the walls and on the floor lay i-D & DAZED mag covers he shot  in wood, recycled  together like ephermal  bible artifacts...
Why was dazed and confused covers wooded out, and i-D left for all to see, does one have more permanence or preciousness over the other? 

Why I continually like this boy so much is the constant reminder the presence of his art gives me- 

THAT INFORMATION IS FOR EVERYBODY.

Its rare also, to find and artist admit to sitting and worrying about his work, and what other people actually think about it, not just the affect its supposed to have.
And, the art/everything/fucking/great.