Thierry Goldberg is pleased to present Ce Qui Reste, an online exhibition of works by Matthieu Livrieri. The exhibition runs from June 29 - July 28, 2023.
Matthieu Livrieri's artistic practice is driven by his profound desire to immerse viewers in vibrant and unfiltered imagery, presenting a rich tapestry of his lived experiences. Working seamlessly across the realms of drawing and painting, Livrieri allows each medium to inform and inspire the other, resulting in a visually distinctive and stylized language of expression. Through fractured perspectives and an exuberant interplay of colors, every artwork captures a singular moment of solitude, offering viewers a fresh and exhilarating perception of both space and subject. His artistic approach becomes a conduit for connecting the viewer to his unique visual narrative, one that merges the tangible and intangible in a captivating and introspective twist.
Ce Qui Reste (translating to "what remains”) delves into Matthieu Livrieri's exploration of spatial perspective and texture within portraiture. Drawing inspiration from multiple images of the same location and subject, Livrieri constructs his compositions by combining the various perspectival lines from the photos, which grants him the ability to dramatically and preternaturally stage his subjects. His bold and distinctly contemporary scenes reformulate this modernist paradigm of collapsing of space.
Each portrait in this exhibition serves as both a study of the subject as well as their surrounding landscape, wherein the subject is portrayed as inextricably connected to the space around them. ‘Michelle Along the Canal (2023)' depicts a woman seated on the edge of canal, but bashfully pulls the landscape to the foreground figure using perspective and color. The blues, browns, and reds of the water behind her subtly merge with her jacket, blurring the natural boundaries of the body and the landscape. Livrieri’s energetic brushstrokes depicting her hair mimic the texture of the tree branches that frame her head, further compressing the virtual volumes of the painting.
Livrieri’s drawings, imbued with a similarly playful rendering of space, lean into the textural abilities of colored pencil. The technique of cross hatching is reconstructed and modernized through his use of shading in spiral loops, as seen in ‘Vers Ostende (2022)', which depicts a tense moment of brooding creative thought. Through his skilled rendering of space and feeling, Livrieri’s drawings become captivating expressions in both the emotional and visual realms.
This body of portraits communicate a captivating blend of raw experimentation with mark-making and perspective, while simultaneously delving into the emotional depths of Livrieri’s subjects in moments of profound contemplation. Ce Qui Reste, the title of the exhibition itself, serves as a poignant reminder of Livrieri's intention—to preserve and evoke the essence of what endures in moments of stasis, both within the portrayed subjects and within the minds of the viewers themselves.
Matthieu Livrieri (b. 1999 Grenoble, France) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. He holds a BA from Ecole supérieure des Beaux Arts, Montpellier, France, and is currently pursuing his MA at Ecole supérieure des arts visuels de la Cambre, Brussels, Belgium. His work was included in group exhibitions at Eve Leibe Gallery, London, UK; Art Agency, Annecy, France; Botanique, Brussels, Belgium; Galerie Hangart, Grenoble, France; and Galerie Lazarew, Paris, France, among others. This is his first exhibition with Thierry Goldberg Gallery.