Matt Town
Depressions
October 30 – December 20, 2020 (extended)
Opening Friday October 30, 1-9pm
Open by appointment only
To schedule a visit, click here or contact the gallery at inquiries@microscopegallery.com
Installation Views
Microscope is very pleased to present Depressions, the third solo exhibition at the gallery by Los Angeles-based artist Matt Town.
In Depressions, Town’s personal and nuanced works in mixed-media, sculpture and video raise dialogues about and critically question gun culture in the US, from Florida where the artist grew up — which is also the state with the longest history of guns on the land it encompasses, dating back to at least the mid-1550s — to makeshift shooting ranges, or “spots,” near his current California home.
The body of work — instigated several years ago by the artist’s dismay at his father’s gun collection obtained slowly through a combination of inheritance, gifts, and personal purchases — acknowledges and challenges even traditional notions and rituals of safe gun ownership, such as those used as forms of bonding between family members and friends. In a country ranked #1 in the world for firearms per capita, where 72% percent of its citizens have personally fired a gun and 44% know someone who has been shot, Town points to the insidious exposure to weapons that comes with family traditions and recreational activities in friendly circles, while making explicit the awesome power of firearms to harm, intimidate, control, and to end a life.
Town’s works in Depressions advocate for and at that same time present real-life conversations with people in his life who are pro-gun: one who discovered that a rifle of his was missing; another who Town learned had switched his career to gunsmith and amassed a sizable gun collection; and a long-time friend who earlier this year accidentally fired his gun in his apartment while tripping on psychedelic mushrooms.
The title of the show takes its name from a series of ten functional walnut cases or “coffins” for firearms handmade by the artist, each fitting one of the five guns in his father’s collection or of the five guns belonging to a college friend. Each case was created from tracings of the guns Town requested from both men following specific instructions he provided them. The work references the tradition of mounting weapons on the wall as trophies or memorializations, but instead honoring the weapon’s absence. The interior within the walnut case was hand carved, painted and flocked with either blue or orange velvet by Town, with the hues corresponding to those of the Florida Gators, the college football team in the Gainesville area that Town bonded over with both his father and friend.
It is only in Town’s two short video works, employing footage shot in real life, that guns appear. The 4 1/2 minute “TRAP” is a home movie made in 2018 that captures Town’s father teaching the artist how to shoot a shotgun for the first time at an outdoor range. The firearm, which had never previously been used, was a gift to Town’s father from the artist’s sister, who had tragically died earlier that year.
The 3 minute “ROOF” is both a document of a life-long friendship and a seething condemnation of reckless gun ownership. The work combines video and photographic documentation of two gun incidents in his friend’s apartment taking place 10 years apart that put the artist’s and others’ lives in danger. The piece concludes with a collage of photos obtained from various formats including 35mm film developed at drug stores and images stored on iPods that Town traded with his friend since childhood, which parade across the screen similar to a memorial slideshow.
Two assemblage works “Shell Midden 1” and Shell Midden 2” contain found bullet casings collected by the artist from Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands and other shooting areas in the American Southwest, encased within bulletproof plexiglass. The titles allude to the gun shells, empty beer cans, truck tracks and other debris left behind at these DIY firing ranges standing in contrast to the seafood shells and other refuse of archeological shell middens, along the coasts of Florida. The artist asks: how will American gun culture be understood and/or implicated by future generations?
“Matt Town: Depressions” opens Friday October 30th and continues through December 13th, 2020. On the opening day October 30th, visit hours are from 1 to 9pm. To schedule a visit or for any other inquires, contact the gallery at inquiries@microscopegallery.com or by phone at 347.925.1433.
To ensure self-distancing and disinfecting protocols, visits will be scheduled to begin on the hour for individuals or groups of up to 4 people. Gallery Hours: Thursday through Monday, 1-6pm. Extended Hours: Friday October 30th, 1-9pm. Appointments outside of these hours will also be considered. Masks are required at all times in our building.
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Matt Town (b. 1989, Sarasota, Florida) is a Los Angeles-based artist working with moving image, photography, painting, installation and sculpture. His work is primarily concerned with a sense of community and one’s role within it and has appeared at Night Gallery, LA; The Box, LA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Millennium Film Workshop, New York; Union Docs, New York; among others. In 2017 he was awarded a year-long CalArts REEF Residency. Matt Town received a BA in Film & Media Studies from the University of Florida in 2013 and an MFA in Art from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 2017.
