If you were to tell the New Zealand born artist Matthew Couper that he is liv­ing in the wrong era — and pos­si­bly the wrong city — he would just smile. He is more than com­fort­able being anachronistic.

Couper, who spe­cial­izes in mak­ing con­tem­po­rary paint­ings that have their styl­is­tic roots in Span­ish Baroque colo­nial art, says that he is “… OK with being part of a tra­di­tion.” Add to that, work­ing and liv­ing in Las Vegas, a city known for the­atri­cal­ity, lux­ury and its tol­er­ance of sin, suits Couper beau­ti­fully. His style may be 300 years old, but his art needs social extremes to acti­vate its sense of moral­ity, and he sees poten­tial in the city. “Las Vegas is a one in a mil­lion place,” Couper com­ments, “and there is no parochial sense of what art is.”

Matthew Couper, “Trickle Down The­ory,” 2011, Oil on can­vas, 58″ x 46″Being a recent immi­grant to the U.S. has also con­tributed to the com­plex, hybrid nature of Couper’s imagery. “I’m start­ing from scratch,” he notes, “but know­ing that I need to assim­i­late socially and cul­tur­ally but while retain­ing a sense of where I came from.” Couper came to Las Vegas — by choice — in mid-​2010, and although many of his themes are uni­ver­sal, he knew that Vegas would give him some­thing he could “tap into.”

An artist with a Kafkaesque view of the world, Couper uses his art to nar­rate per­sonal uncer­tain­ties, and frus­tra­tions. He has found more than enough strange­ness in Vegas — and in Amer­ica — to chal­lenge and stim­u­late his sec­u­lar piety. Couper is both an intu­itive, a moral­ist and a vision­ary. His recent oil “Trickle-​Down The­ory,” which fea­tures the Las Vegas Stratos­phere tower piss­ing out a golden stream of urine over a Boschian cast of char­ac­ters, makes a dark pun on con­ser­v­a­tive eco­nomic the­ory, and some­how man­ages to do so with reli­gious con­vic­tion. The result­ing image is com­pelling, per­plex and idio­syn­cratic; a Pagan Catholic Cirque du Soleil.

Matthew Couper, “Amerika” 2011, 36×30

Matthew Couper, “Alle­gor­i­cal dev of art in a field paint­ing,” 2010Couper grew up in a reli­gious house­hold, but not a visu­ally devout one. He recalls that reli­gion was “kind of there… but no drip­ping Span­ish cru­ci­fixes.” Still, at age 4 he drew his first cru­ci­fix: he had seen one at his grandparent’s house

As an art stu­dent, when Couper first came across an ex-​voto paint­ing — a small blue paint­ing on rip­pled tin — he felt an imme­di­ate pull. “That small image of a Mex­i­can woman kneel­ing before a vision of the Vir­gin of Guadalupe held it’s own on the wall,” says Couper; “It pinged!” As he intu­itively real­ized, Span­ish colo­nial art, with its saints, mon­sters, and acts of devo­tion, rep­re­sents a very pow­er­ful moment in cul­ture; the moment when a pagan soci­ety col­lided with orthodoxy.

Couper soon started col­lect­ing both retab­los — paint­ings ded­i­cated to a par­tic­u­lar saint — and ex-​votos, which describe per­sonal expe­ri­ences and offer thanks. They have given him a nar­ra­tive vocab­u­lary, and he also admires their humil­ity. “I think I like them because there’s no cult-​of-​personality tied up with these works,” Couper com­ments. ” In fact the artists were really arti­sans just doing ‘God’s’ work. No pol­i­tics, no egos, what a great way to earn a wage!”

Ex-​votos and retab­los, with their stark sym­bol­ism, were paint­ing to be instantly under­stood by largely illit­er­ate pop­u­la­tions. Couper, on the other hand, is paint­ing for a pop­u­la­tion that has been over­stim­u­lated by too much infor­ma­tion and too much enter­tain­ment. By appeal­ing to our neglected reli­gious imag­i­na­tions, Couper has para­dox­i­cally man­aged to make images that stand out as lit­er­ally unorthodox.

Couper likes what hap­pens when an ancient sym­bol is brought into a con­tem­po­rary con­text. In “Trickle Down The­ory” a snake with the dol­lar bill’s Great Seal on it’s back stands for the shrewd­ness and astute­ness of art col­lec­tors. In “21^st Cen­tury Car­avaggisti, Las Vegas, NV” a paint­ing mon­key “multi-​tasks” at a strip club, evok­ing Couper’s sense of the “work hard/​play hard” Amer­i­can blue col­lar work­ers that fre­quent Vegas casinos.

His sym­bols, which can seem jar­ring in a con­tem­po­rary con­text, may strike some as Sur­re­al­ist, but that isn’t quite right: they are Pre-​Surrealist — in fact they are Pre-​Englightenment — and don’t need to be seen as hav­ing Freudian mean­ings. Couper puts it this way: “I do like Sur­re­al­ist artists such as de Chirico and Magritte, but I see them as part of a long lin­eage of painters going back to the image-​makers in the Las­caux Caves.” Couper’s sym­bols aren’t self-​conscious or over-​thought; they are an acquired vocab­u­lary that his imag­i­na­tive mind uses nimbly.

Matthew Couper, “4 Solv­tio Per­fecta,” 2011, 5×11

Matthew Couper, “New Self-​Portrait,” 2011, oil on metal, 11″ x 8″Inter­ested in what hap­pens when cul­tures merge and hybridize, Couper doesn’t hes­i­tate to com­bine eclec­tic cul­tural prod­ucts. In a recent self-​portrait, an African power fig­ure stands in a blender, hold­ing the scarred sil­hou­ette of the artist in an uncer­tain sym­bolic rela­tion­ship. Behind the fig­ure a tree sprouts red pla­nar leaves that recall the Supre­ma­tist paint­ings of Kas­mir Male­vich. “The Nkisi Nkondi power fig­ures inter­est me because of their devo­tional sig­nif­i­cance,” Couper com­ments, “but I still haven’t entirely worked out what this paint­ing means.”

Matthew Couper, “21^st Car­avaggisti Las Vegas,” 2011, 14×11

Matthew Couper, “2000 (retablo),” 2009, oil on metal, 14″ x 11,”Couper’s ideas, whether they appear to him in the shower, or in a dream, come from sim­ple per­sonal expe­ri­ences, but take on a new life when expressed by his anachro­nis­tic and eso­teric sym­bols. In a 2009 retablo, for exam­ple, Couper con­jured up a robed Friar gnaw­ing a human leg to express how he felt about a 15 hour per week job teach­ing art at Welling­ton High School. A red inscrip­tion — “A man’s gotta EAT!” — provides a ratio­nal­iza­tion for this instance of Catholic cannibalism.

Darkly funny, and dense with sym­bols, Couper’s paint­ings are his attempt to bridge the gap between the mun­dane and the spir­i­tual. It isn’t an easy job, but Couper has a pow­er­ful set of artis­tic tra­di­tions to draw on when he gets stuck. Couper is, in fact, one of the more hum­ble and sin­cere con­tem­po­rary artists work­ing today. He is a sto­ry­teller on a pil­grim­age, record­ing his expe­ri­ences in a visual lan­guage that once spoke power to peo­ple kneel­ing in a church.

His best paint­ings shat­ter our cul­tural nar­cis­sism and remind us of what ancient peo­ples once knew: our fate is deter­mined by Saints and monsters.

Tags: anachronistic, artist, contemporary paintings, Couper comments, extremes, Matthew Couper, tolerance, tradition

« Ffp: F**k Fear Phobia

Style Wars Uses Kickstarter to Restore Outtakes »

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Art.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.