:Anagram: by Matt Magee

From Eight Modern Gallery:

New York artist Matt Magee creates graphic systems of language based on an internal, undefined lexicon of shapes and colors. His art is inspired by his Texas childhood, much of which was spent accompanying his geologist father to sites of Native American ruins and pictographs throughout the American Southwest. The first thing Magee and his father would do after returning from a journey was organize all the rocks, arrowheads and other artifacts they had collected on the driveway of their home. That impulse is reflected in Magee’s work, which often uses rows of similar but distinct images. “I want those shapes in my paintings to be out of the subconscious, out of somewhere deep,” Magee says. “They reference some arcane language I’ve always tried to create that is a mixture of all my interests. My impulse, rather than abstract painting, is to line up all those experiences into codified forms.”

Even Magee’s process is based on systems of writing: he starts in the upper left-hand corner of a canvas and works his way across and down. His exhibition title, Thought Forms, references a 1905 book by Annie Besant and Charles Ledbetter, which theorized that every color represents an emotional state and that art – such as Tantric art from India – can serve as a meditative template. This idea resonates with Magee, who conceives his art as a reflexive surface that both gives to and takes from the viewer.
If you go to the exhibit:

Matt Magee:Thought Forms

October 3 – November 15

Artist’s Reception:
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Friday, October 3

Contact:
Eight Modern
231 Delgado Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505 995 0231