FLOWING FORMS: Daniel Mattar | Essay Martha Kirszenbaum

23 November 2023 - 10 February 2024

  • Daniel Mattar rethinks the relationship between photography, painting and sculpture, playing with the interstice spaces that infiltrate between each of the media. His protean artistic practice suggests the idea of a mental space residing in the relationship among painted, unpainted, occupied and empty spaces.

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  • Mattar transforms painted objects into photographic digital form, which he reconditions again into a sculptural object, and it is the balance of the relationships among the three, more specifically among volume, color and light, which establishes the very meaning of his works.

  • The choice of tones and colors plays a very particular role in Daniel Mattar’s practice, which he distills with meticulous care... Colors are never there by chance; they convey hidden meanings, codes, taboos or prejudices. They are a reflection of our daily life, our language and our imagination. They are neither immutable nor universal and have a history.

     

    - Martha Kirszenbaum

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  • Daniel Mattar White Balance, 2019 Archival Pigment Print mounted on Plexiglass 110 x 110 cm Edition of 3 plus 1 AP (Edition record) (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, DUO, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, TERRA ÁGUA, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar Oca, 2021 Chromogenic Print mounted on Plexiglass 170 X 100 cm Edition of 3 plus 1 AP (Edition record) (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, Kokai, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, Cidade Vermelha, 2021 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, Shodō, 2022 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Daniel Mattar, White Balance, 2019
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  • Daniel Mattar

    Daniel Mattar

    Daniel Mattar was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1971. From early on, Mattar realized that photography offered a possibility for artistic expression, leading him to pursue a course in Art & Design at PUC-Rio. Daniel Mattar discovered a personal path in portrait photography, launching a highly successful career that lasted nearly 30 years. He dedicated himself profoundly to studying technique and found his greatest curiosity and talent in lighting.

     

    Mattar works with different scales, from micro to macro, photographing pigments on small surfaces, creating three-dimensional compositions, and contemplating light and shadow. To transition from a pictorial image to a photograph and then to an object, Daniel Mattar deploys a range of diverse techniques, generally starting from found materials, on which he uses a painting gesture, covering with a thick layer of oil paint, before photographing the result to reprint it then in large format. 

     

    Mattar has held solo and group exhibitions since 1988, including the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM-RJ), the Banco do Brasil Cultural Centre (CCBB), the Sergio Porto Cultural Space and the Deji Art Museum, which acquired the Photographic Drawings series for its collection. His works are in important private collections in Brazil, the USA, Europe and Asia.

  • Photographic Drawings series

    For his Photographic Drawings series, he appropriates tiny color charts gleaned from various hardware stores, on which he projects drops of paint, recalling the dripping paint technique of the American artist Jackson Pollock. Once rephotographed and reprinted, the result is a set of pop modernist shapes and colors that give the illusion of large patches of soft material in relief.

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  • Daniel Mattar, Kokai, 2021

    Quadra Series

    Kokai, 2021

    Daniel Mattar’s series entitled Quadra presents square shapes taken from color charts on which color classification numbers are inscribed. The intensity is deeper, evoking the energy of the sea and the wind. The texture of the image seems crumpled, agitated, as if traversed by waves and hollows, giving the surface of the photograph an appearance that is sometimes stormy, sometimes lunar. It is this tension and this manipulation between reality and visual illusion which gives the works of Daniel Mattar this particularly seductive shift and strangeness.

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  • Daniel Mattar, TERRA ÁGUA, 2021

    Mineral Series

    TERRA ÁGUA, 2021

    In the Mineral Series, Daniel Mattar uses different pigments of ochre, royal blue, lemon yellow or forest green. In Mattar’s works, pigments also have a social or political history. Some of them come from Morocco, notably from Fez, a city famous for its tanneries, while others are ash residue from Amazonian forests threatened by deforestation.

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  • Daniel Mattar, Shodō, 2022

    Shodō Series

    Shodō, 2022

    The ephemerality in Daniel Mattar's photographs resides in the precise gesture of his hand with wooden sticks soaked in paint, which also connects him to the painting universe. As in Japanese calligraphic writing, the movement has to be quick and precise. The artist has little time to activate the camera and capture the desired volumetry of the paint drops before they dry. The drops have a curved, curved body and an organic appearance and contrast with the colourful background.

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  • Polaroid Series

    Inspired by his first trips to Japan in the early 1990s, Daniel Mattar takes as a starting point a set of photographs of a Japanese doll whose surface has been repainted with titanium white paint. Mattar’s artistic practice has therefore developed around the concepts of recycling and rearrangement of materials and everyday objects. Thus, his frequent use of tea packages from the famous American brand Yogi Tea, labels of industrial products, bank notes, found photographs, stamps or images cut out from magazines, seems to highlight his interest in the tragic banality of everyday life. 

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  • Vista Aérea Series

    Daniel Mattar  exploring the micro-universe of surfaces that leads, in this series the intention to fly over valleys, oceans and mountains formed by the mineral pigment on paper where the artist marks, erases, adds several layers of gestures, calligraphy, colour dust and volumes that reveal themselves monumentally.
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