Exhibition on Display: September 10 - October 30, 2021
Works by Matthew Bourbon
ARTISTS STATEMENT
For several years now I have been painting basic abstract shapes as containers
for the human body, architecture, industrial objects, and various other natural
forms. I wonder about these seemingly disparate categories of things, and how
they share many similarities of form and substance. To focus my paintings, I
have corralled my practice into a series of nominal heads. The “head” I choose
to name each painting is a nod to my studio ruminations and the seat of our
intellect that we imagine residing in our brains.
Essentially, I am using my painting as a place to undo some of my impulses to
think of myself as a solely unique human, separate from all other things. With
a bent toward the philosophic, my work is made from a wondering about this
drive to see ourselves as islands holding tight to our ego. All these musings
are the background in which I make the paintings you see. They are not the
meaning of the paintings, but the driving impulse. Other thoughts about color,
line, shape, toys, modernist book design, or perhaps the rock I find on the
ground are also part of what I filter through my making process. All of it
feeds a curiosity about both painting and the larger world of ideas and things
from which it springs.
ARTIST BIO
Matthew Bourbon is a painter, art critic, and a Professor of Art at the College
of Visual Arts and Design. Originally from the San Francisco Bay area, Bourbon
earned separate undergraduate degrees in Studio Art and Art History from the
University of California at Davis. Relocating to New York City, he earned his
Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts. Since then, his art
has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Shows include Wider West at
the Oil Tank Culture Park in Seoul, South Korea, C'est de la Peinture! at
Bankley Studios and Gallery, Manchester, England, Time, Space, and Process
at Bethel University, St. Paul, MN, and Waiting For Now at the Old Jail Art
Center Museum here in Texas. His work was also shown in conjunction with The
Artist's Eye lecture series at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Bourbon
has won numerous awards for his work, including the Otis and Velma Davis Dozier
Travel Grant by the Dallas Museum of Art to conduct research in Japan. He has
also been selected twice to be included in the Texas Biennial and on numerous
occasions been selected for the publication New American Paintings. Bourbon was
named an Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellow 2015/16, and
he received the Creative Impact Award from UNT, Fall 2017. Bourbon is an
active art critic, contributing to Art Forum, Flash Art, ArtNews, New York
Arts Magazine, and Glasstire Online Arts Journal. He also served for several
years as the regional editor for the much-loved journal Art Lies. Recent
reviews penned for ArtForum include Maja Ruznic at Conduit Gallery, Stanley
Whitney at The Modern Art Museum Fort Worth, and Margarita Cabrera at the
Dallas Contemporary.
ABOUT THE ARTS COUNCIL OF FORT WORTH
The Arts Council of Fort Worth was formed in 1963 to provide funding and leadership to
stimulate and assure the advancement of the arts throughout Fort Worth. Today's Arts Council
continues to promote, nurture, and support the arts in Fort Worth by providing fiscal and
business resources to local artists and arts groups while also serving the community
through management of the Fort Worth Public Art Program and Fort Worth Community Arts
Center. The Arts Council of Fort Worth is supported in part by the City of Fort Worth and
the Texas Commission on the Arts. For more information, please visit www.artsfortworth.org.
ABOUT THE FORT WORTH COMMUNITY ARTS CENTER
Located at 1300 Gendy Street, the Fort Worth Community Arts Center is part of the most
architecturally significant museum districts in the United States, Fort Worth's Cultural
District. The Arts Center's mission promotes experienced and emerging artists with nine
indoor galleries and an outdoor courtyard gallery. The Arts Center's Hardy and Betty
Sanders black box theatre and the William Edrington Scott Theatre hosts a wide range of
performances by local and nationally known artists and organizations. The historically
significant building is home to artists' studios, nonprofit arts organization office
suites, and classrooms. Learn more at www.fwcac.org
