Matthew Sweig

March 1 - 4, 2012
Queen Elizabeth Building
Exhibition Place

www.theartistprojecttoronto.com

The Artist Project is a rendezvous for artists, art collectors, dealers and enthusiasts.  View and purchase original art from over 200 juried independent, contemporary artists and enjoy an eclectic program of talks, special features, and art installations.  

March 3 -6 , 2011
Queen Elizabeth Building
Exhibition Place

www.theartistprojecttoronto.com

The Artist Project is a meeting ground for artists, collectors, and art enthusiasts. View and purchase original Canadian art from over 200 juried contemporary artists and enjoy an eclectic program of talks, special features, and art installations.

October 31 - November 21, 2009
XEXE Gallery, Toronto

Arable land is an agricultural term used to describe land that can be used for growing crops.  Agriculture is the key development in human history that enabled humans to develop and maintain complex societies.  Agricultural production has provided a reliable, predictable food source and out of this abundance, human civilization has grown.

Today agriculture has been pushed further and further from our everyday experience.  The means of producing food is disconnected from urban populations, both geographically and psychologically.  The very cities that agriculture has made possible now sprawl over the earth that once fed them.  Still, the romanticized notion of the farmer mindfully tending crops from seeds in the spring into a plentiful harvest in the fall still lingers in the corners of our memories. 

The exhibited works show seemingly mundane views of agricultural landscapes.  These symbolic images of the agricultural landscape of the past are ingrained in our collective unconscious.  The memory of ‘the farm’ that we all drove by on the highway while growing up serves as a benchmark from which we might evaluate the present.

XEXE Gallery, Toronto
August 17 – September 17, 2006

“Foundation” is an exploration on canvas, exposing the subtle effects of a metaphorical intersection of two light sources and the resulting shadows. The two sources of light illuminate objects in the scene, revealing both the tangible present and intangible intrinsic past.

A first light is cast into the shell of my former studio building, a Parkdale fixture since the early 1900’s, in mid demolition. The paintings will document the structure’s last recognisable moment as an artist studio. A second light is cast upon my ancestors; Torontonians from the turn of the century. I have corporal memory of the building as it was my home. My ancestors are abstracted in the scene and remain fragmentary; as they are understood in the present only through photographs, notes and newspaper clippings.

The dichotomy between light and shadow will define the spaces in which these fabricated histories can be staged, in silence and in solitude.

XEXE Gallery, Toronto
January 27 – February 26, 2005

Terminus illuminates the ephemeral urban moments that eludes the general public.  Terminus is the physical end of a local landmark.  It is the deconstruction of the urban environment, the end of one cycle in the dynamic process that is the city and the beginning of the next.
 Terminus is the objectification of the building in its current state of demolition; the last moment of its integrity as a structure and as a place of memory.

Bridging past and future by implanting the memory of a fleeting temporal event.

This selection of work is from a variety of group shows and private commissions.