Stop the Clock and Open Every Window brings together Sylvia Matas’ work in drawing, video, and artist’s books, presenting foreboding fragmentary narratives that question the limits of perception and what lies beyond those limits.
The presence of people is indirect: a distant vehicle, billows of smoke, tracks left in the snow. In these landscapes partially emptied of human presence there is a palpable sense of uncertainty.
Something has happened or is about to happen. Images hover between existence and disappearance, past and future, emergence and disintegration. There is a suggestion of something impending that is perhaps right around the corner.
They sky is about to grow dark; buildings get consumed by plants or fall apart, a distant car approaches, but is perpetually out of reach. Suspended moments intersect, expand and contract, blurring the boundaries between places and times, between the mind and the external world.
Artist Bio
Sylvia Matas
Sylvia Matas is an interdisciplinary artist from Winnipeg. She received her MFA from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, England. Her work has been exhibited at the Maclaren Art Centre (Barrie, ON), The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Plug In ICA (Winnipeg, MB), Truck Contemporary Art (Calgary, AB), Útúrdúr (Reykjavik), the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Mercer Union (Toronto).