Matthew Silverberg
Statement
Background in Traditional Arts
I began my art studies in about 1990, apprenticing with painter Stan Goldstein and later the drawing instructors Michael Markowitz and Sharon Pearson. I did this while working at Legato Systems, Inc. (a software start-up) and later with other San Francisco based “dot-coms.” I was never interested in a full time MFA program. Instead, I began exhibiting my art in 2001 and 2002—an experience that was transitional and the most important element in terms of establishing my artistic identity. This early artwork culminated in two painting shows at SFMOMA's Artist Gallery in 2003 and 2006.
Painting Context
I began painting with an interest in the mid-17th century Dutch artists Vermeer, deHooch, terBosch, and Steen, attempting to replicate the visual feeling of their still life, interior and figurative work as a means of learning painting and drawing skills. During the next two decades I have moved through a succession of styles in order to understand art: Impressionists, Post-Impressionist and early modernists looking at Cezanne, Manet, Gauguin, Kirchner, Matisse, Redon, Morandi, Souza Cardoso and Picabia.
More recent paintings and printmaking are influenced by three “modern” art currents: mid-century American Abstraction: deKooning, Rothko, Kline, and Joan Mitchell; 1980's neo-Expressionists such as Clemente, Basquiat, Kiefer, and Polke; and new multimedia artists such as the entrepreneur Murakami, Super Flat artist—Aoshima and digital projectionist Jennifer Steinkamp.
Onward to Digital Arts
During the 2000's, I have been making art in a variety of media mixing the traditional and digital. I learned about the digital arts in Berkeley starting in 2003, and now teach digital printmaking, contemporary color, information design, digital portfolio and marketing courses in the Multimedia Arts program at Berkeley City College and elsewhere. I also organized and sometimes curated a number of art exhibitions as well.
A Large Integrated Project: Hikikimori
An example of a recent series is the one I premiered in New York in 2006. It is conceived of as a cross-media series of paintings, drawings, prints and motion graphics based on themes of cultural misinterpretation and anomie. The prints component consists of twelve images in the triptych, including fire, grass, fingerprints and digital imitations of silk weaves, tatami mats, tiles, kaleidoscopes, painted vignettes and gestural marks. I made these images with a camera, scanner, stylus, and compositing tools.
Thematically, traditional painting subjects (birds and cows, plants and landscapes, cities and people) are combined in an imagined scape–referring to another country—Japan. Japan has been a strong cultural presence in California, but one that to me, still has an aura of the distant and exotic. My Japan, an interpretation, is a fantastic country: one of elegant artistic tradition, refined culture and technical expertise that also embodies the dark sides of modernism—social rigidity, anomie, environmental degradation, sterility and corruption. I have never been to Japan but have thought a lot about it—via books, films, art exhibits and my own consumerism.
Future Directions: Abstract & Digital
Now I am working on a variety of projects that are mostly abstract in nature—producing prints, paintings and movies of color patterns and designs, combining classic monotypes with digital print production. Two specific areas of interest have resulted in print series. The first starts with a renewed respect for great social satirists Daumier, Nast, Goya, Crumb. The second combines 19th century curio box collections and naturalist art illustrators such as Audubon, Haeckel, D'arcy Thompson and others. My multimedia series are called Tea Party Confections and Curio Boxes, respectively—digital reflections on traditional art historical genres and media.