Fine Arts Gallery Features Artist Matt Bollinger in School of Art Lecture Series

Anne Weber

Matt Bollinger

The School of Art in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences welcomes artist Matt Bollinger to campus. Bollinger's work is currently on display at the Fine Arts Center Gallery in a solo exhibition, Double Shift; all are invited to see the exhibition and hear directly from the artist at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, at Hillside Auditorium.

Double Shift will be on display at the Fine Arts Center Gallery through Dec. 3. Following the Bollinger's talk on Thursday, the gallery will host a reception with the artist from 5-7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18. The exhibition, lecture and reception are free and open to the public.

As an artist, Bollinger's drawings, paintings and stop-motion animations consciously grapple with the "veritas," or otherwise of the American dream, and captures the zeitgeist of its dystopian dark side.

In a manner of painting that consciously acknowledges its cultural roots grounded within American modernism, Bollinger thoughtfully and tenderly depicts the everyday social derelictions, the small socio-economic diminishments, but human gains and bonds, generated by ravages of the post-analogue, Anthropocene epoch in the shared experience of innumerate locations across the contemporary world.

"Matt Bollinger has been garnering tremendous attention over the past few years for his outstanding drawings, paintings and animations," said Marc Mitchell, curator and director of exhibitions for the Fine Arts Center Gallery. "It's wonderful that we can share this work with the university community, as well as the students at the School of Art. Matt has a way of creating work that connects with viewers from all backgrounds, and the exhibition feels extremely timely."

The artwork that comprises Double Shift spans the past five years and share a collective malaise that can be felt throughout each object in the exhibition. Bollinger shows people going about their daily lives—filling a lawnmower with gas, smoking a cigarette, looking at a convenience store window— but with what Mitchell describes as a palpable fatigue that exists when one is trying to hold onto a world slipping away.

Writer and critic for Hyperallergic John Yau describes Bollinger as "a major artist chronicling a substantial sector of American life." In addition, he discusses Bollinger's use of color, expressions of individuals and in-tune with the emotions of working-class Americans.

Bollinger has a M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Art and Design and a B.F.A. from Kansas City Art Institute. His work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.

Meet Bollinger and learn more about his work at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, at Hillside Auditorium and the gallery reception at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18.