Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith lives and works in London. In 2006 Smith exhibited in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries and he was the inaugural show at Associates in September 2006. In 2007 he exhibited in EAST International and had his first solo show at STORE. In 2008 he has a solo show in the White Room, at White Columns New York, he will exhibit in the Philips du Pury contemporary exhibition space in New York during the Armory, and has a solo show at Rivington Arms, New York and Mary Mary, Glasgow.

Matthew Smith practises what might be described as bed-sit Minimalism, taking objects that, while they are familiar, do not quite exist on their own terms (coverless duvets, shelf brackets, the torn corners of back issues of the British rock music weekly NME, plain seven-inch record sleeves) and marshalling them into sculptures and installations that are characterized by their sparseness and formal precision. In his Design for a Window (2008) two hand towels – one worn, one new and fluffy – stand in for a glass pane. While the work recalls Surrealist explorations of the psychological undertow of the domestic and of the erotics of seeing, it also has a modest mournfulness, contained within each perky or threadbare fibre, which is all its own. (TM)

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