Invading Your Space: Studio Visits
In conversation with artists
Gabe Fernandez
Matt O. Cosby
Sunday August 19, 1-3pm at PNCA
Location: PNCA 511 NW Broadway Portland, OR
PACT offers ongoing monthly events for artists to meet and have conversations about our art practices and careers. Each month a new topic will serve as the springboard to start a dialog about ideas and issues that impact our lives. PACT is about creating an opportunity for artist to connect with each other in an open and supportive environment.
Gabe Fernandez grew up in Sweet Home, OR. He received his BFA in Painting from PNCA in 1999 and has shown in several galleries including Schomburg Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), Guardino Gallery (Portland, OR), Seattle Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery (Seattle, WA), Woodman/Shimko Gallery (Palm Springs, CA & Provincetown, MA) and Linda Hodges Gallery (Seattle, WA). Gabe’s a painter with an intense focus on our relation to the environment in which we dwell. These ideas and themes are expressed through his interiors and neighborhood scenes. Explorations in formal elements such line, form, contrast, composition and color also lend the work to an affinity to the abstract juxtaposed to the representational. Gabe’s work has been featured on Oregon Art Beat, OPB’s “State of Wonder”, on the cover of Professional Artist Magazine and in “The Office” project space at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, OR. Gabe is currently represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle and Woodman/Shimko in Palm Springs, CA and Provincetown, MA.
Matt O.Cosby’s paintings are confections, derived from human industry. Growing up, he worked in his father’s shop, retrofitting machines. His paintings have a sharp, manufactured look, using a combination of modern and diverse materials. With a mechanical and mathematical mind, enhanced with a BS in Economics from Portland State University, his compositions present a systematic order of objects of indulgence.
Matt is a Pacific Northwest artist, whose painting exhibitions relay both diversity of colour and diversity in geometry. His subjects are carefully plucked, objects that tantalize the senses, things that glint and capture our gaze, things that make us feel lucky or prosperous. He is concerned with describing the monotony of the mundane, how it changes in shape, but remains in a predictable manner.
Author and poet Sandra Stone (1934-2018) writes – “Matt Cosby’s glassy, glossy images stimulate the taste buds. Sexy, tactile, compelling–this famished viewer wants nothing more than to indulge. But, wait! Not long before I encounter dark interstices. Deep-embedded,
they cajole the inner eye. Now I weave among optical illusions, patterns––dizzying and precise. In some paintings there is no breathing space but ongoing field––an infinite regression. All this can be seen. But the objects of desire are elusive. They float under the surface, tantalizing, luminous.”
Cosby’s artworks are part of many well-known west coast private collections. In Portland, Oregon, he is represented by Augen Gallery, and has held six solo exhibitions of paintings. With the award of a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, Matt was able to have a solo in Europe at Nidau Gallery, Switzerland in April 2014.