Born 1971. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2003 'Return to the Cemetery of Rock', Sandroni Rey, Venice

Selected Group Exhibitions: 2003 'Retreat', Peres Projects, Los Angeles; 'K-48 Now Plays, D'Amelio Terras, New York; 'Transnational Monster League', Derek Eller Gallery, New York. 2001 'Ghost Stories', Sandroni Rey, Venice 1999 'Tri-Annuale, part one', Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles 1997 'Group Exhibition', Solomon Projects, Atlanta

Publications: 2003 Into the Abyss, contributor. 2002 'Dear Scary Girl', contributor, Fishwrap Art Center, Pasadena 2001 Gothslut, self-published 2000 'Greater New York', contributor, P.S.1, Long Island City, NY 1999 Mallpunk Magazine, contributor 1998 Pee Stories Magazine, self-published 1997 Snowflake, contributor, Smart Art Press

Matthew Greene

Notes on Gothic:

Night skies. Black seas. Matthew Greene's paintings might best be described as little windows of evil. Bruce Nauman's sign taught us that Evil spelled backwards spells "live". Death, paradoxically, would be "good". This is the binary that plagues philosophy. What is darkness as a state of mind? A mode of being? Gothic is the genre, both font and lifestyle. As Marilyn Manson's aesthetic it is a tongue in (pierced) cheek revamping of post-apocalyptic style; nihilism, via teenage angst, as a pseudo-punk pose. But prior to MTV's corporatisation of this genre, Gothic was another set of signifiers- chilly castles, pale heroines and foggy moors. Greene's repertoire of imagery borrows heavily from these literary origins: empty boats floating on black water, Gorkyesque spider webs, rainbows eclipsed by dark clouds.

Greene depicts allegories of a kind of Romantic decay. The figures, always witches, or parts of them, project their emotions onto the body- language becomes symptoms. The secret rituals of witchcraft are alluded to in the visual fabric of the picture, as if the act of painting itself might be a form of sorcery. The bodies, or traces of them, emerge like vapor in the swampy landscape. The sword is the only reference to a possible duality, but it always appears left behind in surrender; a battle lost. There is no culture, only nature. Like a mirage, the scenes form on the verge of their disappearance. Death seems everywhere present, but never really available, like a hideous perfume. Shifting between consciousness and dream state, these scenes float in limbo. Greene narrates these little gothic romances, always doomed, its characters in a state of slow deterioration, haunted by memory.

Chivas Clem