Artist Statement

I focus on recreating archival images with two goals: to explore the materiality of paint, and to reference the nature of the image's original content. I mirror the artifacts and damage from the film or scanning process by letting them become integral to the composition to explore the larger context of the patina of time, nostalgia, and the archive. Historically, I used solely traditional painting techniques, collage, or existing printmaking processes. Today, my simulations blur the lines between photosensitive chemicals and technique with painting, by making the paint itself photosensitive. My work is concerned with history, nostalgia, exploration, and critique. Nostalgia plays an important role, yet its effects are more complex and nuanced than I had ever imagined.

Biography

Matthew Kratz is an interdisciplinary painter from Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 Territory (Calgary) who likes to wade knee deep in online encyclopedic articles researching everything that interests him (usually nostalgia, conspiracies, science, and history). Matthew currently works in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), and is always keen on participating in the arts community, sitting on the Nocturne Halifax Board of Directors. He received his MFA at NSCAD University in 2022 and he recently held his MFA Thesis Exhibition, The Least Nostalgic, at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. Matthew has one published work, Hey, I See Fires, a collection of his painted recreations of unedited archival images from the Apollo missions to the Moon. As well, his work is in the compilation book, PAINting: AUarts 2019 by Jenna VanBeukenhout, which is in the collection of the Banff Centre Library and the Luke Lindoe Library at the AUArts. His work as been in exhibitions such as The Well of Bad Ideas, The Annual Horse Show, Blind Spot, and some of his work was chosen to be shown at the Art Mûr’s Fresh Paint / New Construction 2019 exhibition in Montréal.