Internationally exhibited artist Victor Matthews works are on view at KM Fine Arts in Los Angeles through July 9, 2016. Artist Matthews solo installation, “The Longest Road” exhibition functions as a conceptualized narrative whereas a brick pathway leads to each painting and each individual painting signifies a different chapter in the last year of the artist’s life for the past 30 years.
Matthews, a New York native with roots in Brooklyn, also resides in Los Angeles, graduated the New York High School of Art and Design and earned his BFA from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. After completing his studies, Matthews moved back to New York in 1984 to set up his first studio in the East Village.
Recently, Victor and fellow street artist Kenny Scharf recently completed The Mural Project on the KRINOS building at 1750 Bathgate Ave. Bronx, New York. Each artist completed a 400-foot exterior wall. This is the first collaboration between the two veteran artists since their early street art careers in the 1980s. Through their distinct pictorial voices, they both speak to optimism with deep convictions that art can improve the world, and the location in the Bronx ties these two artists back at their artistic origins.
Matthews has been creating perfectly choreographed mosaic-like murals of whitewashed cityscapes since his introduction to Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Richard Hambleton and Kenny Scharf in the 1980s. Also a harbinger of the New York street-art movement, Matthews developed a unique visual vocabulary teeming with abstracted urban objects, buildings and bridges.
For the last decade, Matthews’ choreographed mosaic-like paintings are teeming with objects and abstracted shapes formed out of a bright white and heavy impasto paint. Each form sits on a raw canvas background, elbow to elbow with others without overlapping.
For more information, www.kmfinearts.com or www.victormatthews.com.