April 22–May 22
Matt Kenyon: Wolf at the Door
at Undercurrent
Undercurrent is pleased to present Matt Kenyon’s solo exhibition Wolf at the Door. This show is the artist’s continuation of SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmospheres and Mass Production) art practice. SWAMP focuses on critical themes addressing the effects of global corporate operations, mass media and communication, military-media-industrial complexes, and general meditations on the liminal area between life and artificial life. Since 1999, SWAMP has been making work in this vein using a wide range of media, including custom software, electronics, mechanical devices, and sometimes working with living organisms.
His style is elegant and subtle with the twists of wonder, surprise, and unexpected paradox. Each of Kenyon’s work has built in individual content and visual metaphor / narrative similar to poetry, short story, or film. The idea and content are where the work begins and determines formal solutions for these machines of thoughts. These are exquisite objects, not only created for contemplative meditation, they are commemorative monuments holding the quality required to inspire action to change social structure.
Wolf at the Door consists of six kinetic, or mentally shifting objects / structures / constructs addressing specific global issues of climate change, housing crisis, mass shootings, health and mental health. They complement each other, by creating cohesion of vastly different subjects with an overarching sense of tension, trauma, and premonition of things to come. Wolf at the Door asks what euphemisms like a debt waterfall, an untapped resource, or a key investment would look like if they reflected the human stories they have unleashed.
