Silas von Morisse is very pleased to present the second solo exhibition of the artist with the gallery. 

Matthew Cole is a painter who employs traditional painting and preliminary printmaking methods to interpret memories of actual and subconscious events - amalgamations of real life and fantasy, often stemming from profound personal experiences. The processes of layering and distorting are instrumental in conveying emotion in his work.The artist uses composite imagery to represent the fragmented nature of memory, narrated through personal as well as familiar references from art history.

Cole’s new work, From Tokyo to Berlin,  is the culmination of three years of travel (from 2015 to 2018) both east and west, absorbing a long history of cross-cultural pollination into his paintings. Japanese printmaking has been a deep well of inspiration for western artists dating back to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Henri Matisse famously espoused the Japanese traditions for their purity of form and color in depicting naturalist scenes and was a famed collector of woodblock prints. Cole travelled to the source, learning the woodblock technique in Okayama and reapplied the experience to his already rich painting practice. Cole’s paintings are a collision of place and memory, an amalgam of east and west, and an experience not to be missed in person. 

The first solo exhibition the artist had with the gallery, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, was named after Carl Jung's autobiography on Visions and Symbols. While Jung tried to grasp the human psyche through writing and analysis, Cole has tried to elevate his own archetypal ideas through his painting.

Cole got his BFA from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA in 2010. He has exhibited at Trestle gallery in Brooklyn where his work was singled out in the review by Sharon Butler in Two Coats of Paint, July 29, 2017. He also exhibited at La Mostra in Italy in 2008. Currently, Cole's works are on view at NEUE House New York until the end of March 2019 in Jam Session, a group exhibition curated by Ella Marder, Special collaboration with Blum & Poe and Silas von Morisse galleries.

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