Matthew Couper - Isolation Paintings

Matthew Couper is an Aotearoa/ New Zealand-born artist, living and working in the USA. After a decade of painting detailed, highly symbolic artworks, his Isolation Paintings return to a gestural figuration, reminiscent of works created early in his career. From the middle of 2019, desert island landscapes, moody skies enveloped with plumes of smoke, eyeballs, nails and Kazimir Malevich-like-constructions, started to inhabit the surfaces of his canvases. Modes of survival and visible threats are presented: fire-starting bow drills and ominous shark fins prowl the surrounding sea, while floating, crisscrossed wood matrices allude to a makeshift shelter. Although Couper now lives in the Mojave Desert, he seems to be looking back to the seclusion and isolation of Aotearoa - especially in a world of pandemic peril. Exhibition toured by the Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru.

Image: Matthew Couper, Vivid Land, Vivid Sky, (detail), 2021 image courtesy of the artist and Paul Nache Gallery