Julia Weber
Staff writer
Chautauqua Visual Arts’ School of Art guest faculty member Matt Bollinger continues the CVA Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. tonight in Hultquist Center.
Bollinger is a painter who makes both standalone still works and animations composed of paintings. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and has exhibited in solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Dublin and London, among other places. His work is on view in “Harmony,” the School of Art faculty exhibition, curated by Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie, displayed now through Aug. 10 in Fowler-Kellogg Art Center.
“I’ve always been interested in narrative. That’s taken different forms over the years,” Bollinger said.
After being introduced to the work of William Kentridge, Bollinger found himself interested in the practice of animation and began experimenting with animating his paintings through a stop-motion process. His process is fairly straightforward: by creating a painting, taking a photo, making an alteration and repeating, he is able to compile a series of photos and produce an effect of movement or change through an extensive series of small alterations.
While the presentation of his work varies, Bollinger is concerned with the working class Midwestern experience. Having grown up outside of Kansas City, he said much of his content reflects the surroundings of his childhood.
“I create the characters from imagination and personal experience, but they’re not copied from photos I’m taking or anything like that,” he said. “They’re really developed almost in the way that drawing is like writing for me. It’s closer to the way a novelist might develop characters, drawing upon their own life, but then having to go and be on their own to fully flesh out that world.”
During tonight’s lecture, Bollinger said he plans to discuss his artistic practice with a specific emphasis on his newer body of work.
“I like to give some of the backstory of how the work has evolved,” Bollinger said. “It’s looked a lot of different ways over the years, so I like to give some sense of the arc of how it got to look the way that it does.”
