Matt Kleberg: Giving In to Let Go

Matt Kleberg: Giving In to Let Go

PROJECT: VARIOUS WORK
WORDS & ARTWORK: MATT KLEBERG

I approach every new painting with 99% confidence in a plan, and 99% of my paintings veer dramatically away from that plan. Sometimes the shift happens right away, and other times it occurs weeks or months down the line. That repeat failure of my initial proposals used to frustrate me. It felt like any painting that resolved itself in an interesting way was the result of my stumbling blindly into some good luck or accidental success. It seemed to me that what I really brought to the piece was just the naive willingness to start and the rest was out of my control. And I was right. That is exactly how it works.

My paintings tend to borrow from architectural motifs—I’m always going on walks and taking pictures of buildings that capture my eye—and end up looking like colorful but vacant stages, altars or building facades. The graphic quality of the work reads cleanly from across a room, but upon closer look, the surface reveals itself to be a layered build-up of decisions, blunders, false starts and revisions—time and history baked into otherwise static and symmetrical compositions. I’m after a structured, solid sense of unknowing, a concrete expression of mystery and paradox. I stumble around searching for just the right color juxtaposition, just the right form, waiting to be surprised.

"Things may not always go according to plan, but in the end, I find exactly what I was looking for all along. Stumbling, as it turns out, is just fine."

Matt Kleberg was born in 1985 in Kingsville, Texas. He received his BA from the University of Virginia in 2008 and an MFA from Pratt Institute in 2015. He is represented by the Brussels gallery Sorry We’re Closed and Texas-based galleries Pazda Butler and Barry Whistler. Kleberg has been exhibited across the world from New York to Amsterdam, and he has been featured in the likes of The New York Times, Vice, ArtDaily and Hyperallergic. His work can be found in public and private collections including the Williams College Museum of Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the National Gallery of Art. Kleberg recently returned to Texas, landing in San Antonio where he currently lives and works.
ONE LESSON LEARNED IS A FEATURE IN WHICH CREATIVES SHARE THEIR PROJECT AND THE MAIN LESSON THEY’VE DISCOVERED WHILE CREATING IT. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE CREATIVE VOYAGE PAPER, ISSUE 4 →
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