20 Things, 2012

Matthew Langley   Emerging artists

Matthew Langley is an American abstract artist who lives in New York. He is interested on the balance between colors and process, scale and relationship, planification and improvisation. He currently lives and works in New York. The artist studied at the Virginia Commonwealth University and obtained a degree from the Corcoran School of Art in 1986.

Langley's artistic apporach is linked to a wide ranged of interests. He is particularly familiarized with colored field painting, particularly the work of Morris Louis, Sam Gilliam and Gene Davis, as well as the abstraction of Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn and Callum Innes among others. The artist is also insterested in the paintings of artists like Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

Matthew Langley's technique to create his works of art consists in constructing and expanding as well as reducing and minimizing the painted surface. He thinks that it is not counterproductive and that the way to go is often to construct, reconstruct and so on. He often uses layers of semi-transparent paint combined to the sub surface of the artwork to reach the desire effect.

Langley's work is present in several private and public collections, including in MacAndrews & Forbes and the Doris Patz collections (University of Maryland). The artist has exhibited a lot in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, mainly othe East Coast. His most recent solo exhibitions include "The New Paintings" at the Blank Space, New York in 2015 and "Looking In: New Painting" in Axom, Rochester, NY in 2014. Several articles have been written about Langley's work in publications such as Art in America and The Washington Post.