Over the past ten years Wycoff’s work has covered a wide range of conceptual, stylistic and material approaches. (...)



In classical music the term variation has come to mean the repetition of a musical theme with modifications of melody, rhythm or harmony. Wycoff offers his variations in a similar spirit. Wycoff’s main themes of identity and perception appear and reappear throughout the exhibition as they shift and change in relation to ideas such as poetry, beauty, order, abstraction, death, disaster, monumentality, color and time. These shadings allow for a depth of experiences.

The works question the distance between the personal and the universal, confuse notions of chaos and order and use the art historical meanings of expressionism, minimalism, pop and conceptual art as tools for building a new aesthetic framework. As an artist, Wycoff is both drawn toward and skeptical of earlier artistic attempts at universalism and deeply informed by discussions that emerged in the 1970s, 80s and 90s such as the blurring of boundaries between painting, sculpture and installation, and dialogues about deconstruction or pluralism. Wycoff’s Variations ask the viewer to reconsider their preconceptions about artistic style, and focus on the ways in which form and content build structures of meaning.



from Matt Wycoff's exhibition VARIATIONS at beta pictoris gallery Birmingham, Alabama | January 27–March 03 · 2012