Matt Bryans
I like to push things to breaking point, and stop just before the material breaks down completely.
Matt Bryans (United Kingdom, 1977) works with newspaper pages, magazine photos, and other ordinary printed materials. In his best-known works, he takes press photographs and slowly erases the faces with a pencil eraser. The paper becomes thin and soft, and the image turns pale and blurred. Only small details remain — an eye, a mouth, a shadow, or the outline of a head. The people can no longer be identified, and the news story behind them disappears. What is left is a fragile surface that records every movement of the artist’s hand.
Bryans’ practice is based on patience and repetition. He works alone and by hand, erasing or carving for hours at a time. He uses materials that are normally thrown away and gives them a second life. By removing faces and details, he shifts attention away from headlines and events toward absence, fading memory, and the short lifespan of information. The photographs lose their political and historical context and become quiet, anonymous images.
