Matt Haywood: ROSE THEATER
2618 Pasadena Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90031
Friday, September 28 at 7:00 PM 11:00 PM
Ends Oct 28, 2018
O’ is pleased to announce, Rose Theater, the first solo exhibition of works by Matt Haywood. A rose is a symbol more than it is a flower, the perfect prop, schmaltzy, over-represented, and used up. Its potential as an object for literal representation is visually simple but poetically complex. A rose is a state of mind. So is a wedge. A wedge of ambiguous fruit at a base level plays on endless clichés such as temptation, satiation, indulgence, etc. Unlike a fully intact counterpart, the wedge could represent human interference, division, and perhaps most importantly, some specific portion of a whole. This symbol / non-symbol in the formal capacity is simply a satisfying thing to create, with potential to suggest and contextualize perceived physical properties outside of itself such as the effects of light. Along with a small vocabulary of other objects, the wedge is used as a formal prop to help create an environment for an audience that can look but never touch. The ghosts of stagehands and set dressers haunt the artists process. With their leftover paints, brushes, and building materials he pastiches memories of sets from his past and theirs, from half remembered movies or movies that never were. Herein lies the truth in Rose Theater, a theater that exists only in the mind. Work is the reward, the object its ghost, and the image its memory.