On November 17 I attended the gallery tour Mercedes Matter: a retrospective. The event started at 1 pm but we went in to view the gallery in groups. I was the part of the third group to go in so I had to wait about 40 min to go in. The tour itself was fairly short and only lasted about 15 min. The gallery was very small and contained artwork from 3 stages of Matter’s life. The artwork from her childhood was displayed, after she became older, and then her artwork from the end of her life (her maturity phase as our tour guide called it).
The art of Matter is from the modern period, and her focus wasn’t to show ideal forms but rather an impression of the form. Her focus was mainly using different colored paint and making an abstract image, where you had to analyze it for a little bit to figure out what it was. For example, one of her images was made up of triangles and lines and you would have to figure out what the image represented, and in turn, it was a table being flipped and all the objects on the table about to fall. As Matter grew older her images increased in size and complexity, and became more abstract. The art gallery was short, but it was interesting looking at the artwork of a modern age artist. Even though you couldn’t decifer what everything in the painting was itwas interesting to look at how the artist was trying to convey her idea.