Matt Magee
Data Maps & Fingerlines, 2019
Aluminum on linen base sheet with poured linen
18.5 x 14 inches.

Dieu Donné is pleased to release Data Maps & Fingerlines, a new Paper Variables edition by Matt Magee. Working with Master Collaborator Tatiana Ginsberg, the artist created a variable series of 15 unique linen works with recycled aluminum and linen pulp overlay. Following two matrices, Matt Magee hand-cut and placed aluminum trimmings, incorporating these discarded objects into new handmade paper abstractions.

Language is integral to Matt Magee’s work. Often in his paintings and prints, the artist creates configurations and contours that are organized in gridded patterns of information. Magee explains, “My impulse for the Paper Variables project was to integrate into the paper making process a material that I already used in my practice but in a new and different way. By laying shapes cut from aluminum cans in these rows, the produced images reference science, and, more specifically, biology and genomics. Data Maps suggest the sequencing of chromosomes while Fingerlines is exactly that, rows of finger length lines of aluminum, which as a composite whole on the sheet also reference an invented genetic codex. The aluminum is held in place by a thin pour of pulp and I like how it’s caught alive in the delicate matrix of the paper surface.“

About the Artist

Matt Magee is best known for his minimal abstract geometric paintings, sculptures, prints, assemblages, murals and photographs that reference contemporary scientific, ecological, and technological advancements. He was born in Paris, France in 1961 and later moved to Brooklyn in 1984 to attend Pratt Institute for an MFA after completing a BA in Art History at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. Magee maintained a studio on New York City until 2012 and currently lives in Phoenix, AZ. Magee’s work is included in the collections of Museum Fine Arts Houston, the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Twitter, Inc and JP Morgan Chase amongst others. The artist was a 2007 and 2015 Josef and Anni Albers Foundation resident fellow and winner of a New York Foundation for the Arts painting grant in 2002. A Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant recipient in 1991, Magee has exhibited his work worldwide since the mid-1980s.

For more information, please visit his website:
http://www.mattmagee.info/