Matthew Craven

Hashimoto Contemporary is pleased to present Folk::Lore, a solo exhibition by East Bay-Area based artist Matthew Craven. The exhibition is Craven's second solo presentation at Hashimoto Contemporary.

From Prometheus and Athena to the Garden of Eden to the Big Bang, Matthew Craven's solo show Folk::Lore at Hashimoto Contemporary features new works on paper that explore the myriad creation stories explaining humanity's role in the cosmos. By re-contextualizing cultural symbols that have endured through decorative motifs, the variegated and intricate compositions that make up the works in Folk::Lore prod us to reconsider our relationship with mythology and, therefore, our position in the world.

Collaging and drawing on the back of old movie posters and other types of found paper, Craven locates images of decorative objects from global cultures in discarded or outdated textbooks to mix into his drawings of intricate patterns. His compositions include ancient sculptures, vessels, florals, and geometric patterns emphasizing how visual symbols are malleable, their meanings temporary and highly contextual. As conduits for the characters and narratives that tell us who we are, the decorative arts find kinship with myth as entities that help us make sense of the world around us.

These new works on paper offer a fresh perspective on life's fleetingness. Embracing florals and the human form, the artworks in Folk::Lore offer a moment to contemplate life's duality and contradictions: "We are only here for a little while, but we can do beautiful things while we are here. Impossibly beautiful things," Craven states. Though our human lives are finite, our stories outlast us, even if they transform through each telling.

Matthew Craven is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. Combining found images from archival sources that reference humanity's visual history with his hand-drawn patterns and illustrations, Craven's works on paper create a new handmade universe of past, future, and present commonalities. Photographs of archaeological remains and the natural world are overlaid on colorful textiles or florals drawn on the back of vintage movie posters, creating a hypnotic vernacular that points to the wholeness of human history. In re-contextualizing visual symbols from different cultures and periods that symbolize creation stories from the Garden of Eden to the Big Bang, Craven intervenes in preconceived notions of history's objects as fixed in time and place. The elements of visual culture that tell the age-old story of human experience are not part of a static archive built upon through discovery, but ingredients in a melting pot of global influence beyond time.