Lexington, KY
I am not especially into skulls, punk rock, S&M, or gore—the dominant imagery of Matt Minter’s paintings. So let’s leave that provocative, edgy, and very hard-to-ignore stuff aside for now and notice what’s more subtly present. One, meticulous renderings of the figure, mostly in black and white, with the occasional addition of red. Two, strong use of triangles, parallelograms, and solid lines. Three, schematizing of painting itself, through the depiction of splotches, drips, and even, in the case of “In Her Power,” an artwork-within-the-artwork. Oddly, that description could be applied to the pop art masterpieces of Roy Lichtenstein. What to do with that correspondence? Well, pop was all about elevating low contemporary culture to the level of high art, and using commercial techniques to do so. Minter does something similar, with one plus: the messiness and grotesquerie of his chosen subject are made orderly and controlled through his rendering.
—Lori Waxman 3/24/17 2:27 PM