Opens Thursday, April 4th, 5:30-9PM
Artist will be in attendance

Wil Aballe Art Projects is proud to present a solo exhibition of current work by Toronto-based painter Matthew Brown.

“When I was young, I was obsessed with a hardcover National Geographic book called Our Universe; it was full of mind-blowing colour illustrations of the surfaces of other planets, and of terrifying speculative renderings of what creatures would be capable of inhabiting them. When I first saw Matthew Brown’s paintings, they brought the same strange feelings I received from the book flooding back to me. Originating in tiny abstract line drawings, Brown’s large, enigmatic canvases choreograph uncanny compositions that hover on the precipice of figuration and abstraction. Otherworldy forms seem to flit between solid and ephemeral states as the paintings vibrate with an equally alien colour palette that is nearly vertiginous in its idiosyncratic juxtapositions. I like to think the paintings channel alternate dimensions that Brown has somehow glimpsed.”

- Text by Jon Davies, Toronto-based curator and writer

Matthew Brown works with painting and drawing. He completed his BFA at the University of Victoria, BC and MFA at Concordia University, Montreal. Brown was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition twice and won for Western Canada in 2006. Brown has exhibited throughout Canada and internationally. In Canada at The Vancouver Art Gallery, MOCCA, Toronto, and Access Gallery, Vancouver. He has had solo shows at Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto, and Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Vancouver. He has been reviewed in Border Crossings, Canadian Art, Contemporary and Frieze magazines.

In addition to Sargasso Space, his work can currently be seen in the group exhibition, Relax a little; one of your most celebrated nervous tics will be your undoing at Narwhal Art Projects, Toronto curated by Jon Davies and Kristin Weckworth.

• View photos of this exhibition
• Artist's website