Freddy, Joshua Abelow’s upstate gallery. Her small furious paintings of toilets lining the refurbished barn called to mind the dirty cartoons of my childhood like Ren and Stimpy and Rugrats, where part of the joke was the speed and imperfection of the line. While their subject matter and language were simple, one could observe Matranga’s desire to push the ordinary into another dimension—maybe even the sublime.
Curiosity piqued, I visited Matranga on her home turf, a Brooklyn studio connected to her apartment. She was at work on a new series, her Winter paintings. In part inspired by New York’s prolonged cold front, the images teased out all kinds of seasonal cliches from swirling cups of Starbucks to gingerbread houses. Now on view at The Loon gallery in Toronto, her new paintings served as an entrypoint for a conversation around her her intuitive practice.
What role does comedy play in your work? Is it something you associate with relief or critique? Dan Graham recently told me, the secret of all great art is humor.
in your life?
