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Taoxichuan·Jingdezhen International Studio relaunch the artist lecture series with online platform at 2021. The studio is very pleased to invite the American artist, Matt Nolen, the presenter of this week artist lecture titled:"The Space Between". The lecture will be held on Wednesday, January 13, at Taoxichuan International Education Program -- Master Online Lecture. In this lecture, New York artist Matt Nolen will discuss the artistic evolution of his work as a maker of ceramic objects for over 35 years. His recent works in porcelain explore the potential of new spaces created between forms as they split and/ or converge.
Matt Nolen
Matt Nolen is a studio artist living and working in New York City and Narrowsburg, NY., USA. Trained as a painter and architect, Nolen’s work includes sculptural objects and architectural installations using ceramics and mixed media. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in numerous private and public collections including: The Cooper-Hewitt Museum, NYC, The Museum of Arts and Design, NYC, The Newark Museum, NJ., The Houston Museum of Fine Art, TX., The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA., The de Young Museum, San Fransisco, CA., and the Everson Museum of Art, NY.
As a painter, architect and storyteller, clay provides the means by which I can marry my loves: the painted surface, sculptural form and narrative content. Ceramics gives me the language to communicate my stories to a world audience. The themes of my early work have included a broad range of social, political and psychological subjects.
I then turned to the figure as inspiration for forms, departing from the lavishly painted vessels and tiled environments of previous works. In doing so the stories I told became more personal and were often informed by the inner landscape of self: (a) notions of shelter that explore what we protect and keep private vs. that which we choose to reveal, (b) escape through dreams, and (c) contemporary takes on ancient Greek and Roman portrait busts and the architectural load bearing caryatid and atlas. I have developed 3-D porcelain speech and thought balloons that have been combined in various ways to explore the narratives that inspire me. I have also expanded my use of sculptural materials to include found objects, metal, wood and stone.
Recent work has been exploring the spaces between forms as they split or conjoin as a metaphor, for the microcosm of cells splitting in the body or the macrocosm of the seams, borders, boundaries and walls that separate nations and communities.
My work tells the stories of those who are challenged by conflicts and are in the midst of emotional or psychological transitions. It is life lived within the complexity of these “margins” that interests me the most.