Matthew Monahan
My imagination is much too old to be sheer; it’s a cluttered scrap heap of souvenirs, relics, and sex drive. Imagination is not just a flicker on the eyelids; it is a hard won process of bringing images into reality, an encyclopedia of methods that has a life of its own.
Matthew Monahan via Zoo Magazine, 2010
Matthew Monahan’s (1972, United States) work presents a futuristic archaeology. Drawing from a wide range of influences, from Modernist art to ancient totems, Monahan’s ‘artefacts’ are both familiar and strange. Filtering historical mythologies through his own personal system of reference, altered further through the experience of making, Monahan’s work alludes to a contemporary spirituality, where beauty and brutality coalesce as virtual monuments.
