Matt Dampney
Matt Dampney (1977, Tamworth, Australia) is an artist who mainly works with painting. By applying abstraction, Dampney tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations.
His paintings are notable for their perfect finish and tactile nature. This is of great importance and bears witness to great craftsmanship. By emphasising aesthetics, he creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round
in circles.
His practice provides a useful set of allegorical tools for manoeuvring with a pseudo-minimalist approach
in the world of painting: these spontaneous works resound and resonate with images culled from the fantastical realm of imagination. By questioning the concept of movement, he finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humour that echoes our own vulnerabilities.
His collected, altered and own works are being confronted as aesthetically resilient, thematically interrelated material for memory and projection. With a minimalistic approach, he creates work in which a fascination with the clarity of content and an uncompromising attitude towards conceptual and minimal art can be found.
The work is aloof and systematic and a cool and neutral imagery is used.
His works sometimes radiate a cold and latent violence. At times, disconcerting beauty emerges.
The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of their manifold layers of meaning. By choosing mainly formal solutions, he considers making art
a craft which is executed using clear formal rules and which should always refer to social reality.
His works are based on formal associations which open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered images arise
in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, he absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation.
His works isolate the movements of the ocean and our environement. By doing so, new sequences are created which reveal an inseparable relationship between motion and sound. By focusing on expressive techniques and materials, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the human drama in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in everyday life.
His works doesn’t reference recognisable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning
is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted.
Matt Dampney currently lives and works in Sydney.