18 Apr 2014

Matt Bryans: LANDS, at Treignac Projet

Matt Bryans: LANDS

The core component of Matt Bryans' Lands exhibition is an installation of gunstocks that once belonged to bolt action rifles, semi automatic rifles, automatic rifles, sub-machine guns, machine guns, shotguns, and air rifles; all sourced by the artist and presented here as an evolving collection. Accompanying the exhibition is a publication by the artist that supplements, supports, and mediates this collection, and yet does so without completely giving up its own artistry. The publication lists each of the stocks with details of origin, history, and current condition, written in a language that borrows from the objectifying processes of the museum register.
The human stories that run through the exhibition are displaced by the animated histories of the gunstocks, overturning our central position in the work's narration. Bryans decentres the human players in this history of military conflict in favour of the materials that constitute it. Lands follows from Matt Bryans' previous works that have refigured the body to the point of near collapse, and through the materials he uses we are also reminded of the ceaseless presence of war in this centennial year of the beginning of World War One.
This exhibition has been prepared with Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen Norway.
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Matt Bryans is an artist based in Stavanger, Norway. His work is included in both public and private collections worldwide, and has been shown internationally at venues including Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013), SFCamerawork, San Fransisco (2011), Ullens Centre of Contemporary Art, Beijing (2008), Palazo delle Papesse, Sienna (2007), Tate Modern London (2006), Atlanta Centre Of Contemporary Art (2006), MOCA LA (2005), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Ghent (2005). He has been short-listed for the Guerlain Drawing Prize 2014.
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The 2014 exhibition programme is directed and curated by Matt Packer, and supported by Institut français, Conseil Général de la Corrèze, Conseil Régional de la Corrèze, la Mairie de Treignac, and the BKH-stipend from Hordaland Art Centre
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Treignac Projet is a public exhibition space situated on the Plateau de Millevaches, Limousin, France. Since 2007, Treignac Projet has developed exhibitions with artists such as Bedwyr Williams, Luxury Logico, Alasdair Duncan, and N'krumah Lawson Daku, as well as pedagogical projects such as The New International School (2007 - 10), led by Shahin Afrassiabi, and The Matter of Contraction (2012), featuring Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, and developed in collaboration with the Centre international d'art et du paysage de l'íle de Vassivière.