Description
When you think about a body, what do you imagine? This text explores the MFA Thesis Exhibition: Exuberant Body, by artist Matthew Bacher. In this text Bacher contemplates this question through the analysis of his work. The exhibition, in its physical form, consisted of eight paintings installed in the Everett G. Jackson Gallery on campus at San Diego State University. This essay will navigate the artist's path toward and interest in the human figure. It will examine the artwork’s potential to communicate visually, as well as the physical process in which the work was created. It will delve into the relationship between the work’s material quality and the more illusory, depicted subject matter. The text will explore themes of representation through the body and how Bacher’s exhibit participates in this conversation. It will expand on what the artist means when depicting a subject, as well as the philosophical research the artist used as a lens for conceptualizing the artwork. This will touch on the artwork's capacity to convey sensation and posit an intersection between sensation and representation. It will triangulate relative artists within the field in contemporary dialogue with Exuberant Body and briefly highlight some of their contributions to the conversation. And finally, the text gives a cursory trajectory as to where the work is headed and future potential research.
