Matthew Monahan | CI08 Life on Mars

Born: 1972, Eureka, California
Lives and Works: Los Angeles

At the root of Matthew Monahan's sculptures and drawings are physical attributes common to all humans: the face and the body itself. He draws on our investment in the function and form of things that we habitually have made to resemble ourselves--whether dolls and puppets, effigies and totems, statues and figurines, busts, masks, and other prostheses or those objects into which bodies may have transformed, such as relics, trophies, and mummies. Composed and "decomposed" from a wide variety of materials, particularly carved floral foam and beeswax, the body as it emerges from Monahan's direct sculptural process is rarely a complete entity. Torsos, heads, and limbs are repeatedly broken or punctured as if the sculptures were made up of ransacked icons, and his charcoal drawings of faces are typically torn or crumpled into three dimensional forms. Plinths, pedestals, and the transparent structures that often integrate or encase these grotesque bodies are characteristically incomplete and further lend Monahan's work the dual sense that museological piety and violent iconoclasm have both been set loose.

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Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International

Widely known as one of the pre-eminent international surveys of contemporary art in the world, the Carnegie International was founded at the behest of industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896. With the Venice Biennale, the Carnegie International is the oldest such exhibition in the world. Titled "Life on Mars", the 2008 Carnegie International will focus on the increasingly relevant question of what it means to be human in the world today. The exhibition presents work by 40 artists who investigate particular aspects of the human condition, moving along paths that are both introspective and worldly while poetically traversing the dramatic spectrum from tragedy to comedy.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Art
• Carnegie
• International
• CI08
• Museum
• Carnegie-International

[scottspenc]

I dig what you are saying.... I remember when you wrapped a doller around an army man. Do you still have that piece.. I think about that all the time.....

[defender729]

hay cuz whats up this mike miller, colleens son this is really cool to see you out there