About
Biography
For almost twenty years, R. Matthew Bollinger has been working with site, process, and architectural metaphor amidst tradition and technology – to create paintings that feel both poetic and structural.
Born in Germany and raised in Denver, Bollinger received his BAFA and Master of Architecture from the University of New Mexico and his MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. Bollinger has exhibited nationally, including at the Lakewood Cultural Arts Center in Colorado, Amarillo Museum of Art in Texas, Augusta Savage Gallery at UMass Amherst in Massachusetts, and Harwood Art Center in New Mexico. He currently lives and works in the American Southwest and is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Diné College, a tribally controlled academic institution serving the Navajo Nation.
Statement
R. Matthew Bollinger is a visual artist who works conceptually with site, process, and architectural metaphor to create works that are centered on painting and drawing. Stemming from art and architecture experiences, his work engages poetic and site-specific relationships between material and concept – in the domains of painting, architecture, digital technology, iterative process, typology, environmental/social activism, and history. The line is an obsessively interwoven element within his process, metaphorically evoking psychological exploration of place, time, labour, dialogue, and topography.
Research
The focus of his research and studio production is to investigate the current state of painting in the context of architectural tectonics. He explores the intersection of painting with digital technology, structure, materiality, and design metaphor (site, place, section, plan, exploded view), to reveal concepts and processes that influence studio practice. This is accomplished through concept-led, material exploration that asks what a painting is and how it can be constructed to reflect an idea or place.
To achieve these goals, Bollinger conducts practice-led research by producing a series of artworks that prompt dialogue and questions of the painting discipline and its intersection with technology, particularly the areas of digital planning and poetic assemblage. He produces works in close liaison with technology as a contemporary means towards the structural symbiosis of form and content. Through process, his activity moves through the initial lenses of technology and architectural tectonics to address the more traditional problems that arise in painting such as scale, texture, color, hierarchy, contrast, and the material disconnects between traditional processes and contemporary methods.
To summarize, the following questions drive Bollinger's creative research: What is a painting? How do the parts that represent a painting, come together to make a resolved whole? How is digital technology impacting contemporary painting practice? How are functional, structural, and cultural purposes interrelated to aesthetics, expression, and representation? Can a painting, similar to architecture, be site-based while indicating a sense of place?
