Chason Matthams’ still lifes challenge ubiquity of image-making

Jul 1

July 1, 2024

Chason Matthams, ‘Agape in the Spectrum.’ Magenta Plains, May 16 – June 29, 2024

In the era of ubiquitous image-making, Chason Matthams’ paintings stand out as a reinterpretation of still life in a way that an image created by a click on a smartphone cannot.

Oyster Shell w/ Anthony Van Dyck’s Drunken Silenus’ supported by Satyrs (blue), 2023. Oil on linen over panel. 18 x 14 in. — *Oyster Shell w/ Anthony Van Dyck’s Drunken Silenus’ supported by Satyrs (blue)*, 2023. Oil on linen over panel. 18 x 14 in.

Chason Mattham presents his second solo show at Magenta Plains. The large-scale works in the show represent camera models from the past. Technica cameras created the 3D version of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ (2012), while Rolleiflex was the first widely used reflex camera that enabled photographers such as Diane Arbus to create images in the 20th century. The machines are portrayed in saturated pastels reminiscent of 1950s Hollywood glamor that present them as stars in their own right and not just as the means to create such imagery. Matthams pays fastidious attention to detail, including carefully finishing ‘studio lit’ backdrops, impressing upon the viewer the importance of the subject as though it is a Presidential portrait. Yet the scale of the works does not invite further close scrutiny – as one squints to make out the overall impression of a nineteenth-century wall-size history painting, so one must step further away from these works to mentally hold the image in its entirety.

The smaller works featuring translucent agate and oysters, on the other hand, sucks the viewer straight in, urging one to examine the minutely recreated floral patterns behind the stone or the little faces that show up behind the main subject. The lustrous surface of the oyster shell and the luminous quality of the agate is powerfully seductive. The jewel-colored palette enhances the realism of the works. The small still lifes are rendered in delicate strokes of light and shade; the fact that one can see the penciled grid on the canvas signals that despite the illusory method, the (hand) making of the image matters. The backgrounds on them contain references to works by Anthony van Dyck, Hyacinth Rigaud, Rogier van der Weyden and Thomas Moran – an eclectic group of paintings that share the characteristic of being dispersed throughout time and place in history. These are not easy appropriations, or facile snapshots of replicas but reinterpretations that challenge one’s memory of the original. Were the flowers the same ones Rigaud painted? Did the satyr actually smile that way? Matthams shows us it is still possible to resist a simplistic approach to image-making.