Mateo Cohen Monroy

Mateo  is a Colombian artist, living and working in Berlin, who’s practice is a reflection on the matter and the support of painting, in other words, how images come into being.

 

Through an unusual use of conventional painting materials, oils, canvas and stretchers, Monroy  presents traditional compositions devoid of any painterly impressions, forcing the viewer to relate to painting in a new way. His unique abstract works emphasize the way they have been built, the way the materials relate with one another, enabling him to unfold the complexity of the surface and explore, through the act of painting, how space is concealed and disclosed by matter. 

 

After being created, his paintings are immediately deconstructed and processed further in numerous ways, from stripping the layers of paint from the canvas with surgical precision, creating a view of the back of the painting, to sowing up the materials shaped in this way, ultimately arranging them anew into sculptural paintings. The result is highly aesthetic works that release paint and canvas from its usual context and break through the barriers of painting and sculpture in an unusual way.