{"id":1006,"date":"2012-11-08T01:59:10","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T06:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2013-03-29T10:01:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T14:01:54","slug":"matthew-cusick-at-pavel-zoubok-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/content\/articles\/matthew-cusick-at-pavel-zoubok-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Matthew Cusick at Pavel Zoubok Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

By Ric Kasini Kadour<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthew Cusick presented a series of collage-paintings at Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York that showcased the artist\u2019s use of maps in the creation of portraits of women and oceanic scenes. Cusick abstracts photographs by reducing them to layers of color. He then recreates each layer using old maps, matching not only hues and tones to the color, but the places on the map to the subject of the portrait. And finally, he assembles the collage-painting on a panel by cutting and inlaying each piece so as to produce a perfectly smooth final work. The result of this painstaking process are collages with multiple, interwoven sources synced together like instruments in a symphony.<\/p>\n

Oceania<\/em> recreates a familiar Polynesian postcard that shows a bare-breasted Tahitian woman in a crown of flowers reclining seductively in the surf. Maps which make her are of a variety of places: her left cheek is of Hawaii, her right cheek of Spain. Her lips are of Sweden; her breasts Paris and Aveyron. Polynesian islands float\u2014Papeete, Moorea, Tahiti, etc.\u2014above her in the acrylic washed background.
\n\u201cThe desire to explore the surface of each of Cusick\u2019s pictures, irrespective of subject matter, eroticizes them and makes them fascinating. Linking picture and method only intensives them,\u201d explains artist and writer Michael Corris in the exhibition\u2019s accompanying catalog.<\/p>\n

Less erotic is the portrait of Leni Riefenstahl holding a monkey. Cusick puts the Italian town Cherie in her right pupil. Riefenstahl shot films in Northern Italy. The monkey\u2019s right ear is made of maps of Sudan and Ethiopia. She spent much of the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s photographing the Nuba people in South Sudan. The German cities of Munich and Nuremburg are on her teeth. It is tempting to sift through Riefenstahl\u2019s biography in search of a greater significance of these places as if the maps were a grand\u00a0cipher\u00a0to decode the woman in the portrait. But I think to do so would be a misreading of Cusick\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

By threading source material, subject, and final image so effectively, Cusick addresses some fundamental challenges of collage. Too often collage relies on the accidental catastrophe of smashing images together. In Cusick\u2019s earlier work, he was doing just that. His \u201cHappy Endings\u201d series combined magazine images of mid-20th century automobiles with lush flowers to create orgasmic bouquets of color. While these works were pretty and evocative, they played upon the disconnect between the subject of the final work and the source material. Their power was in the juxtaposition of the human and the natural. But in the works in \u201cThe Mind Is Its Own Place,\u201d he uses source material as one would use paint, inlaying the paper fragments as precisely as one would brush paint on a canvas. By doing this he liberates his source materials from the temporal, vintage, nostalgic trap that source materials often set. He takes old media and brings it into the now. He reinstates its relevancy to the contemporary viewer and brings with it, the original image, and ultimately the women in these portraits.<\/p>\n

This Exhibition Review originally appeared in Issue Two. To see other Reviews from the world of collage,\u00a0SUBSCRIBE<\/a>\u00a0to Kolaj or\u00a0PURCHASE ISSUE TWO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image:<\/strong>
\nLeni<\/em>
\nby Matthew Cusick
\n48″x32.5″
\ninlaid maps, acrylic on panel
\n2012<\/p>\n

Courtesy Pavel Zoubok Gallery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ric Kasini Kadour Matthew Cusick presented a series of collage-paintings at Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York that showcased the artist\u2019s use of maps in the creation of portraits of women and oceanic scenes. Cusick abstracts photographs by reducing…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/MC-leni-detail-1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QTD7-ge","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5759,"url":"https:\/\/kolajmagazine.com\/content\/content\/collage-exhibitions\/crosscurrents\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":0},"title":"Crosscurrents","author":"Christopher Byrne","date":"10 April 2017","format":"gallery","excerpt":"Matthew Cusick and Diane Samuels: Crosscurrents 13 April-20 May 2017 Opening reception: Thursday, April 13, 2017 from 6-8pm \"Crosscurrents\" is a two-person exhibition of intricately wrought collages by Matthew Cusick and Diane Samuels, whose respective practices reflect a deep commitment to process, narrative and the archival impulse. 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