April 14-20, 2005

art

Pencil Him In

Rob Matthews, Conquering Demons (after Blake) #2 (2004), 8 3/4 inches by 7 inches, graphite on paper.

Rob Matthews conquers demons and wrestles snakes in his religion-themed drawings.

by Susan Hagen

Shadowy devils lurk behind a couple seated at a dining table set with wine glasses and a box of Goldfish party mix. The man chugs wine straight from the bottle while the woman studies her nails with tight-lipped exasperation.

This dark human comedy is Communion with New Wine #2, one of Rob Matthews' newer works.

Matthews, a young Philadelphia artist who hails from North Carolina, is now presenting 13 meticulous graphite-on-paper drawings in his first solo exhibition at Gallery Joe. This show reveals a mature and original body of work; Matthews draws from religious subjects and ordinary daily life — and radically transforms these subjects into open-hearted human allegories steeped in deadpan humor.

Matthews uses a drawing technique based on a silky accumulation of tiny parallel marks made with a hard, sharp pencil (9H!) and a muted chiaroscuro. The drawings are filled with bright light, breezy textures and pearly shadows. Matthews is openly curious in his religious faith, and 12 of the drawings (all 5-inch-by-6.75-inch images) explore this episodically. He puzzles over literalism in the Gospel of St. Mark in this body of work and writes in his artist's statement: "So are you supposed to play around with rattlesnakes and drink rat poison to see how strong your faith is? I don't know ..." The protagonists — acted out by Matthews and his wife, Tracy — in these figurative drawings are always dressed in regular clothes. The scenery features ordinary places, like dining rooms, rumpled beds and boring suburban subdivisions, made extraordinary.

In many of the drawings, we watch in voyeuristic awe as our male protagonist, a la David Byrne's big-suited alter ego, veers out of control when faced with serious difficulties like a plague of snakes or an infestation of pesky demons. In Handling Serpents (for RW) #1, #2 and #3, he is shown slightly from below, giving him the effect of a struggling giant. He's dressed in a nice shirt, tie and dress slacks while grappling with snakes — a scene that is both absurdly humorous and graphically Freudian. Cottonmouth #1 and 2# both frame the man mug-shot style against a bare white background with snakes shooting out of his mouth, while his body seems racked with the intensity and the shock of the experience. Another series, Conquering Demons (after Blake) #1, #2 and #3, is a sort of pictorial exposé of our hero attired in boxer shorts and wildly swinging a claw hammer at a row of tiny cartoonish demons inspired by William Blake's engraving Job's Evil Dream. The intense emotional and spiritual content in all of these small drawings is squeezed through a filter of classical form and balance.

The exhibition also includes a large multipanel drawing, The Assumption at Ridglea, that is modeled on traditional altarpieces and measures 49 inches by 54 inches when open. Matthews is interested in demonstrating that spiritual life can happen anywhere, anytime, and "the idea of a specific "holy place' seems to defeat the point of Christianity." The piece has a large central panel with a detailed drawing of a brand-new suburban neighborhood complete with tiny newly planted trees and a shadowy departing figure levitating just above the rooftops. It's derived from a real housing development that Matthews discovered near West Chester, "an especially anonymous-looking place, set in a nice valley." An expansive vision of the sky with clouds sits above the main panel, while a compact view of a bed and rumpled sheets hangs directly below, like a predella painting of an empty tomb in an altarpiece. In two panels on either side, the couple poses like barefoot saints that typically flank an altar. The slouching Matthews ceremoniously presents a mousetrap, and opposite him a bored-looking Tracy holds a large cat, each exhibiting a different technique to ensnare the devil.

Matthews explains that his work, "like for most artists, is a natural byproduct of being open about my inner life and struggles," and it's not evangelical in its intent. I'll testify personally: You don't have to be religious to appreciate these excellent drawings.

Rob Matthews: The Assumption Through May 14, Gallery Joe, 302 Arch St., 215-592-7752