Matt McCormick: A Thousand Miles From Nowhere

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Nothing At All is delighted to present a private exhibition by American artist Matt McCormick on view from 7 to 31 October 2022. Titled “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere”, the exhibition features a retrospective series of oil paintings by McCormick when he visited Hong Kong in 2017, which is inspired by cigarettes, an essential commodity to many people in daily lives in the past and present.

Born in 1987 in the U.S., Matt McCormick is a multimedia artist, whose artwork assimilates a diversity of cultural influences culled from the American West into an artistic vision that is as unique and dynamic as the topography itself. Within McCormick’s body of work, seemingly incompatible elements cohabitate with ease—reflecting the conflicting histories of Western culture. Here, as in his paintings and drawings, nostalgia for a fabled past abuts the realities of the “American dream” that confront him daily in Downtown Los Angeles, where his studio is located. The artist embraces these gritty aspects as equally formative to the Golden State as the homestead towns, gold rush bonanzas and 1920s Hollywood glamour that captivate our popular imagination. His works ruminate on the striking contrast between the physical inheritance of the Wild West, populated with dejected and disposable objects, and the vibrant cultural legacy that remains as alive today as ever before. McCormick’s art embodies the true spirit of America, but also the human condition, replete with renegades, risk takers and outlaws.

In this “cigarette” series, McCormick attempts to recontextualise the object itself that was a commonplace of public life in America for centuries.

“The cigarettes are a symbol of sorts. In one way they act as the great unifier, a connection to history. Tobacco has been used by man for thousands of years, so it’s this constant that has a linear trajectory through time. It’s a great democratizer in a sense, people of all types use it, from presidents to peasants.”
– Matt McCormick

In his works, he emphasises the symbolic and cultural meanings borne by the imagery of a cigarette, which, he believes, can transcend the boundary of time, and contributes to an important part of the American history.

That being said, McCormick has further elaborated his reflection on the shifting ideology of cigarettes from the past to now. “When I was a smoker, it was always a time of reprieve. A meditative like moment that was always socially acceptable to take. We are in a time of a shift socially for this and are seeing society reconfigure their standing around this formally universal everyday/everyman activity, which creates a fascinating dialogue with the imagery of the cigarette. The stamped-out cigarette almost acts as a reminder that that pause was taken and it is time to return to the rat race.” Depicted in diverse directions and forms without repeating one another, the cigarettes by McCormick are clustered or scattered all over the surface deliberately to create an alluring composition to the audiences. By close observation, one can not only look at the explicit details such as the grits and the creases on the cloth of cigarette, but also capture a sense of nostalgia in contemporary context pervaded in the paintings.

Matt McCormick has been a tattoo artist for over half a decade, which has been a great support to his other art practices and creative projects. He believes the language he speaks in his paintings can very easily mirror with his tattoo works, which all fit very seamlessly together. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Miami, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Aspen, and San Francisco.