fbpx Matt Copson | CIRCA
Matt Copson’s work cogently employs theatrical devices in an effort to approach notions of contemporaneity, abstraction, eternal recurrence, automation and the uncanny.

Utilizing examples from folklore, the culture industry, and ancient philosophy, Copson reintroduces familiar narratives, sometimes partially rendered or in the process of abstraction. Central to these narratives are protagonists or characters who typically express themselves in the form of a soliloquy while coming to terms with their current state or predicament, a predicament that can only be described as being highly dramatic, perpetually conflictual, and impossible to resolve.

For the last several years, Copson has focused on the specialized medium of laser animation. Traditionally employed in concerts, nightclubs, and Pink Floyd events, the artist became fascinated with the medium as a natural progression from what has been a foundational source for his practice both as a tool and as a conceptual methodology: drawing.

In contrast to a traditional moving image, laser animation distinguishes itself not only in terms of how light is manifested (and projected) but more importantly in how movement is rendered. In a moving image, the illusion of movement is depicted through multiple still images and the minute shifts between them. In a laser projection, movement is essentially generated by movement itself: mechanical motors rapidly move lasered points across a material surface to form a picture. Thus, even a still image generated by laser projection is continually in movement. Synonymous with the act of drawing, laser animation can be fundamentally understood as drawings in movement.

For Copson, this holds prismatic significance insofar as the primary concern of his practice since its onset has been contemporary subjectivity, defined by the conditional constants of flux, spectacle, and attention.

Matt Copson was born in 1992 in London, England. He currently lives and works between London and Los Angeles.

Circa Commissions

London Zeitgeist: The Spirit of the Times

Written by Norman Rosenthal

David Hockney, the great star of the Piccadilly Lights and all round the world this last May (“Sunrise at Sunset” I called it, has often stated there is no longer a Bohemia like he used to know – a lot to do in his mind with bans on smoking and perhaps even a new puritanism that seems to be infecting the world at this time. Well I would, with all due respect to the master, maintain it is not quite as simple as that. certainly as far as the visual arts are concerned, indeed  in culture generally, every new generation, in each place where young artists live and work, will form its own new Bohemia. This is one definition of the Zeitgeist – the Spirit of the Times – a largely German philosophical concept and composite word, that has now entered the English language just like Kindergarten/ Garden for Children!

In spite of the terrible nationalist misunderstandings that underline Brexit, London remains still a great cosmopolitan largely tolerant mega city – beautifully so, and  it still attracts artists to live, work, interact with each other, support each other too. Since 1945 at least many such groups of artists and their hangers on  have come and gone – one thinks of worlds around Francis Bacon Lucian Freud and the Colony Room; Richard Hamilton, David Hockney and Allen Jones walking up and down the Kings Road in the Swinging Sixties, the Sculptors who gathered around the Lisson Gallery up the Edgware Road and the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in Sloane Square in the Seventies – Gilbert and George, Richard Long, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and others, only to be succeeded in the happy Hoxton Square Days by the YBA’s, lead by Damien, Sarah, Tracey, Angus, The Chapman Brothers and a host of others.

 

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