Disquieting Code - Oil Painting "Postscript"

2020 was such a distressing year that we all hoped to close the page in earnest. Yet, when almost halfway into 2021, we are still fighting to escape from the dark shadow 2020 cast, constantly adjusting or expanding our traumatic memories, by generating sobering Postscript, which was the title of my new self-portrait, recording such an emotional journey of mine in that eventual year and beyond.

Postscript
28” x 22”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2021

 

Postscript was published by Artistonish, Issue 8, March 2021

 

Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 
 

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Revisiting SFMOMA During Pandemic and David Park's Retrospective

SFMOMA reopened yesterday, and we went today to see the David Park retrospective and quite a few old friends. Like visiting an all-but-forgotten place and time, but now we're back in smoke-n-COVID-n-unraveling-democracy world. Still. Well worth the trip across the Bay...

 

The main offer was the David Park, A Retrospective, October 4, 2020–January 18, 2021. It was a glorious exhibition. In the normal years, I would have returned to see it again soon. Hopefully, we will be able to see it before it ends.

 

 

 

We also saw drawings from David Park and his circle. These life drawing studio might be the one still in use in UC Berkeley and I probably have spent some time drawing models there as well.

Richard Diebenkorn 

Franz Klein

Robert Motherwell

Cy Twombly

Anselm Kiefer Cy Twombly

Paul Cezanne

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Max Beckmann

 Thank you, SFMOMA!

Featured Painting - Silent Party

Starting this horizontal group portrait in a somewhat more upbeat time, employing a colorful palette, I aimed to create a group of people engaged in dialogues and interactions. However, during the painting process, those figures took more and more an air of despondency, and the vibrant colors started to become untruthful and had to fade. A couple of months later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the piece was finally completed, it had morphed into a monochromatic nightmarish hallucination, featuring some sketchily painted heads, shrouded in white gauze, turning into different directions, strikingly silhouetted against pitch dark background, and emoting resignation, sadness, and anger. Though compressed in space, they seemed hardly related to one another, and remained in utter isolation; a party without conversation. To their left, a jumble of cantilevered structures protruded from the distance, adding an atmosphere of foreboding and disintegration. This painting ended with a sad wailing note, aptly echoing the signs reverberating in our daunting time.


Silent Party
18”x36”
Oil on Canvas
Completed in 2020


Originally posted on matthewfelixsun.com 

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