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Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of
5/18/2013- 6/23/2013


Opening reception: Saturday May 18th, 7-10pm

Regina Rex presents the first solo exhibition of new and previously viewed artworks by Mathieu Lefevre, since his untimely death in 2011. Lefevre’s work has tirelessly engaged in the idea and materiality of ‘bad’ art, often pairing the underpinnings of language art and tautological revelations, with slap-stick execution. Taking the tropes and trends of contemporary art, such as poetic failures and clever ready-mades, Lefevre locates their ultimate end-game within a visual ‘punch-line’. However this is not to say that the work simply performs a visual one-line joke. Works such as “Monument to Indecision” express a genuine artistic dilemma of where to begin within a context of production that professes to embrace anything and whatever. Within this dilemma Lefevre focuses on a complex commitment to the materiality of art—how to make artwork which self-reflexively performs precisely the operation which it claims, without relying on anything exterior to the work.

The comedy of Matthieu Lefevre’s practice lies in his ability to move between text, sculpture and paint to create visual slippages in which the artworks embody the position of the viewer, they become objects which review their own relative success, desire and question their own material being. Lefevre has taken the trajectory of “bad art” and “bad painting” in a direction that moves away from the artist as the locus of disobedience and rebellion towards a type of practice in which the artworks themselves disobey their own imperative.

-This text was written by Danna Vajda artist/ writer and close friend of Mathieu Lefevre. She has shown her work alongside Lefèvre’s in Montréal, and held dear the dialogue they maintained over studio visits in Brooklyn. The exhibition Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of, was organized with the assistance of Mathieu’s friend and colleague, Alhena Katsof.

New York-based Mathieu Lefèvre was a multidisciplinary artist, whose work often encompassed sculpture, painting and photography. Playfully and critically using forms of twisted logic, simplification and exaggeration, Lefèvre purposefully distorts and misinterprets language, signs, symbols and meaning relating to the microcosm of the artistic milieu, seeking to simultaneously disillusion the viewer and create new illusions in its place. Often relying on humor and derision as heuristic tools, he works with irony and cynicism to test the fragility and the flexibility of these mediums, seeking to rearrange and disrupt the relationships between viewer, creator, commodity and context.

-Text adapted from Mathieu Lefevre’s artist statement


Press:

10 Best NYC Art Shows in 2013
Hyperallergic: Hrag Vartanian

Mathieu Lefevre, Regina Rex
Art Forum: Corrine Fitzpatrick




Installation view of Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of


Installation view of Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of


Installation view of Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of


Installation view of Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of


Installation view of Mathieu Lefevre: The Stuff Things Are Made Of


Mathieu Lefevre
Untitled [title unknown]
2011
Oil paint on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Shit
2011
Oil paint in kitty litter on canvas
14 x 14 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre

Mathieu Lefevre
Natural Phenomenons
2011
Oil paint in kitty litter on canvas
11 x 13 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Paint Sandwich
2010
Oil paint between two canvases
18 x 20 x 4 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Wash Me
2009
Dust on acrylic on canvas
18 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre and Division Gallery, Montreal


Mathieu Lefevre
History of Painting
2009
16 x 16 x 3.5 inches
Oil paint on board
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre and Division Gallery, Montreal


Mathieu Lefevre
Wä Wä Wä Wääää
2011
Oil paint on canvas
20 x 30 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Take Out
2008
Oil paint filled paper bag
9 x 9 x 11 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre and Division Gallery, Montreal


Mathieu Lefevre
Painting in a Trash Bag Painting
2010
Oil paint and polyurethane on board
27 x 33 x 2 inches
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre and Division Gallery, Montreal


Mathieu Lefevre
Monument to Indecision,
Monument to Indecision (Version: Regina Rex)

2008 / 2013
Photo of all the things in my studio taped together to shape a sort of "monument" / all the things we could gather taped together to shape a sort of "monument"
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Detail of Monument to Indecision,
Monument to Indecision (Version: Regina Rex)

2008 / 2013
Photo of all the things in my studio taped together to shape a sort of "monument" / all the things we could gather taped together to shape a sort of "monument"
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Detail of Monument to Indecision,
Monument to Indecision (Version: Regina Rex)

2008 / 2013
Photo of all the things in my studio taped together to shape a sort of "monument" / all the things we could gather taped together to shape a sort of "monument"
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre


Mathieu Lefevre
Detail of Monument to Indecision,
Monument to Indecision (Version: Regina Rex)

2008 / 2013
Photo of all the things in my studio taped together to shape a sort of "monument" / all the things we could gather taped together to shape a sort of "monument"
Courtesy of the Estate of Mathieu Lefevre