Matt Chmielarezyk

Exhibit opens First Friday, December 2nd, 2022 from 5pm-9pm and runs through the month of December.

 

“Filling a space in a beautiful way. That is what art means to me.”  – Georgia O’Keeffe

There are people that create images and those that collect images. I believe I resonate most with the latter. Since boyhood, I’ve found myself drawn to a seemingly simple action – a mostly unconscious editing and arranging of that which greets my eyes. Innately, I struggled for a process – a method or technique – that could contain my compositional thought. A simple record of the way I thought something should look when I organized it in my mind.

As a boy, drawing filled that need. After years of intentional and aimless sketching, I developed a fascination with super-realism and a love/hate relationship with exactness. I was fascinated with art that would have you crane your neck and squint your eyes to decipher between illustration or photograph. I may have had the skill, but I lacked the patience necessary to finish such things. I needed something quicker. In my pre-teen years, a camera and a Boy Scout photography contest taught me that pencil and paper could not keep up with my poly-thinking mind. What began was a life-long exploration of equipment, technique and creativity, that has since accompanied me on all my adventures.

Ultimately, I’m an experientialist. I thrive on interest, investigation (often distraction) and the invitation of immersion.

As an experientialist, I struggle to deny any of these pursuits. On account of this, not in spite of it, I’m able to present work that speaks for me with several different voices. One voice might tell a story of a tangent culture that embraces its traditions just as much as we embrace ours. One can describe a landscape that can never be repeated and leaves you to come up with the story. Another voice takes a close look at what we pass over, only to hand it to the viewer for their own interplay with the sight. No matter what I choose, it’s what I’ve seen. An experience.

“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”  – Henri Cartier-Bresson