Opening reception: Saturday, August 4, 2012 from 6 to 8pm
August 4 – August 29, 2012
Martha Otero Gallery is proud to present Eden, an exhibit of paintings and drawings by
Matthias Düwel, curated by Julie Machado.
Düwel’s work centers on the idea of flux, excess and superabundance. At first glance,
the environmental issues addressed in his pieces deflect recognition, due to the skillful
use of unique color spaces—from chromatic grays to highly saturated pinks, greens,
blues and violets.
The worlds Düwel constructs are reminiscent of amusement parks, camouflaging so to
speak the seriousness of the subject matter. His chaotically vivid, whirlwind compositions
spin out of control, however upon closer inspection, little areas of respite, little Edens
appear: a snow globe, an Airstream trailer, a suburban enclave. These idealized
enclaves produce the realization that only deep inside ourselves, within the confines of
our own inner sanctum, can we find the stability that we as humans inherently seek...our
personal Eden. Borrowing on a similar iconography, the drawings presented in this
exhibition are more intently focused on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and its
ongoing repercussions.
Matthias Düwel was born in Berlin, Germany in 1957. He received his MFA from the Berlin
Universität der Künste in 1983, where he studied under Klaus Fussmann. The following
year he was awarded a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service to
live and work in NYC. That same year, he was made artist-in-residence at the NYU
Deutsches Haus and received a one-year studio fellowship at the N.Y. Studio School,
where he worked with Fred Thursz and David Reed. In 1986, Düwel received a Pollock-
Krasner Foundation grant. Solo exhibitions of Düwel’s work have been held at venues in
New York, Paris, Berlin, Denver and Tucson, among others. Earlier this year, 26 of his
pieces were shown in Consumer/Consumption, an exhibition with glass artist Matt
Eskuche at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson. His work is held in the
permanent collections of the Musée d’Estampes, Geneva, the Stiftung Stadtmuseum
Berlin (Museum of the City of Berlin), the Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, and the Library
of Congress, Washington, D.C. Düwel has in addition taught art for many years, first at
Parsons School of Design and for the past seven years as Lead Art Faculty at Pima
Community College in Tucson. After living in NYC for 20 years, Düwel moved to Oracle,
Arizona, in 2004, where he resides today.
