VOLTA: Matthew Stone

Matthew Stone’s human landscapes are monumental and simple, strong and fragile. His mounds of naked bodies are presented as multidimensional beings full of life. The pivotal questions are of separation and return, of challenges to perceptions of individuality. Separated bodies physically return; placed together to undergo a romantic mutation that enables a metaphysical reconnection. Stone uses the interplay of light and darkness to follow sculptural curves and surfaces, awakening the imagination’s desire to delve into the (c)overt. It is this polarisation that creates the fields of tension in all of Stone’s works. Our surroundings and ourselves often seem divided into irreconcilable binaries: right/wrong, light/dark, good/evil, I/other. Rather than rejecting these overly simplistic, seeming contradictions, Stone proposes new contexts for their powerful co-existence. Stone has just been proclaimed the most important British artist under 30 of the Sunday Times.

Matthew Stone, The Body Beyond, 2010, Pigment print mounted on dibond, 93 x 139 cm, Edition of 3 plus 1 AP