Matt Kalasky
Illustration from I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF MY MIND. I BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF MY SOUL.
Hardcover book, 42 pages
2010
Project website: www.mattkalasky.com/BELIEVE
Still from Valley Dwellers project trailer
2010
Project website: www.mattkalasky.com/valley
Artist Statement
My art is about how understanding is generated. It is an investigation into contemporary weekday empiricism.
My art is about how understanding is performed. It is an investigation into contemporary weekday theatre.
I am interested in how and where the knowledge we gather coagulates into a diorama of the world—a stage—a character whose skin we share.
I see an exotic cultural geography and a gelatinous mediated memory that have produced a seductive and concrete reality. For example, contrary to my age and upbringing I remember fondly growing up in Malibu in the early ‘90s with all my friends and brothers from TV. Love is Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger; “You complete me.”
My task is not to lament or to obliterate this plastic and hollow reality—this myth. My art, rather, seeks discovery and acknowledgment. Like artifacts from a distant and removed ziggurat, my art points to the construction of this myth and in turn, reveals the sinews of its operation. I want the consequences of (mis)understanding to be recognized and objectively considered, in this, the blinding sunrise of their prominence.
IN OTHER WORDS
“People in movies kiss in the rain all the time because
kissing in the rain feels good.
Kissing in the rain feels good because
people in movies kiss in the rain all the time.
This should never stop us from kissing in the rain.”
-MATT KALASKY