In 2021, when I saw again the exhibition Matt Bollinger: Leave at the Zürcher Gallery, I concluded with this:
Bollinger is a major artist whose chronicle of a substantial sector of American life is more than a commentary on the failures of capitalism. This is a heartfelt and thoughtful response to a demographic trapped in a cycle of comfortless options.
While Bollinger did not expand the geographical parameters of his subject, his memories and views of Independence, Kansas, he did strengthen and deepen it in this small, beautiful and melancholy exposition, Matt Bollinger: Station with François Ghebaly (April 22-May 27, 2023). The exhibition includes six recent paintings and “Between the Days”, an 18-minute hand-painted stop-motion animation from 2017, which is worth seeing in its entirety – Bollinger’s animations are also strong and convincing as his paintings.
Bollinger works in flash and acrylic on canvas, giving his paintings a matte surface. Located in the front gallery, they vary in size from 20 by 16 to 96 by 78 inches. It seems to be able to work in a range of sizes without diminishing the power of its images. “Uncle Dave” (2023), the show’s largest painting, depicts three sanitation workers at work. Together, they form a triangle, leaning against a yellow truck whose door is open. The apex of the triangle is occupied by the tallest and oldest figure, flanked on either side by a younger man smoking a cigarette.
None of the artist’s figures correspond to the ideals of physical beauty championed by Hollywood, fashion designers or fitness and beauty magazines. Unlike Claude Monet and other Impressionists, who focused on leisure, a new phenomenon in mid-19th century France, Bollinger recognizes how the desire for cheap labor and profit degraded this possibility. Staring blankly as they perform the necessary duties of an unsatisfactory job, the men and women in his paintings are afflicted with an unspeakable uneasiness. They know what they are doing is useless.
In the two largest works – both of which are in museums – Bollinger uses color to structure the painting and inflect the mood in a way that sets him apart from his contemporaries and historical precedents, such as Edward Hopper. As carefully choreographed as “Uncle Dave” is, it never feels still because of the role color plays in uniting and distinguishing the characters. Holding a rake in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other, the young man on the right stares blankly at the man in front of him. Dressed in the brightest yellow of this very yellow painting, he is the only character of the three not to look at the viewer. The older man getting into the truck is also watching us. The tonal shifts in the yellow help hold the painting together and add another emotional dimension.
The two men staring at the viewer evoke the strain that infects the current “us and them” situation in the United States. This encounter between subject and viewer, which is at the heart of modern painting, beginning with Edouard Manet’s “Olympia” (1863) and the prostitute staring haughtily at the viewer, is very different from the voyeuristic point of view adopted by Hopper. and continued by artists such as Eric Fischl. Being a voyeur allows the viewer to feel superior, a position that Bollinger consistently pushes back in his work. While the young man with the rake wears a bright, clean uniform, the yellow truck behind him is dirty. Can the majority white-collar art gallery audience, many of whom are also wealthy, see him as separate from his work? Are the only true appreciations of an individual those relating to appearance, power and material wealth? Can this public bring garbage collectors into their homes and museums? These are the questions posed by Bollinger.
Bollinger more directly addresses the futility of working in a mechanized world in “Cold Drinks” (2023), which juxtaposes a young man selling soft drinks from an ice chest next to a “Pepsi” vending machine. The vending machine and the young man are bathed in different shades of turquoise and blue, which binds them together. A pair of hands reach out from the right edge of the painting, offering money to the young man for a drink. He doesn’t seem to notice, and on some level seems stiff and hollow-eyed, like the vending machine.
I found something interesting, engaging and thought provoking in every painting in the exhibition. In different ways, they surround topics such as waste, recycling and work, but they do more than comment on them. Like Kerry James Marshall, Jordan Casteel and Aliza Nisenbaum, Bollinger deals with the invisible and the neglected. One difference is that he reveals the disarray of his subjects, something you won’t find in the work of the other three artists. Bollinger has his finger on the pulse of something disturbing: the latent discontent of a large swath of the American population. Another difference is that it takes care of the class, which few people approach in the art world. Its subject matter is the white working class that our celebrity-obsessed art world has largely forgotten or denigrated. I find it interesting that Bollinger is the only one of the artists I mentioned who has never been exhibited in a museum in New York.
Matt Bollinger: Station continues at the François Ghebaly Gallery (391 Grand Street, Chinatown, Manhattan) until May 27. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
