Matias Faldbakken’s debut solo show at Galerie Chantal Crousel, “Beaten Ink, Upset Brick,” Downcast Charcoal” features a series of installations comprised of existing drawings and stacks of lacquered bricks, which sit just beneath the wall-hung works. On view until February 5, the show follows Faldbakken’s practice of creating art that plays with opposing elements—like language and illegibility, proposition and cancellation, or restraint and generosity—that all lead back to one question: What is antagonism?
“Each drawing comes with a brick sculpture under it, like a dado, a box, a boot or a piece of TV-furniture. A brick is, in essence, a block-shaped ‘loaf’ of clay, roughly the size of a rye bread, baked—fired—and stacked on top of other bricks,” said Faldbakken of the exhibition. “The brick does what it needs to do, and it shows what it does. But then it is lacquered and it gets abstract.”
