Matthew Johnson: Selected Works presents a comprehensive curation of paintings realised by the artist between 2018 and 2024.
Demonstrating Matthew’s singular way of seeing, and how this shapes his approach to painting, the collection of works comes together in a glowing exhibition reminiscent of poetic automata and arranged in a way that responds to the gallery’s unique context.
Across a myriad of canvas sizes and orientations, from slender liminal slices of an abstracted horizon to the expansive frame of a large rectangular portal, forms are composed in a way that invites both micro and macro engagement. Reminiscent of the kinetic and elemental qualities of the natural environment, each and every piece coaxes closer scrutiny, as well as an expansive outlook requiring viewers to move towards, away from and around the work to cultivate an engagement akin to being immersed in the land and waterscapes represented.
Matthew’s process is derived from his visual perception and harmonic relationship to both his intimate and shared experience of the natural world. His interest in atmospheric formal abstraction guides his employment of abstract forms such as stripes, squares and orbs which form a language of visual braille, of woven forms that meld and shift across the pictorial plane, of portals into a way of seeing things in a minutiae of natural elements.
