Stuart Shave/Modern Art is delighted to announce a solo exhibition of new sculpture and drawing by Matthew Monahan. This is the artist's third solo show with Modern Art.

Matthew Monahan’s approach to making plays off two and three-dimensional form, embracing the physical shift and transition of ideas between drawing and sculpture. Over the past decade or so, Monahan has reflected on museological and art-historical conventions of display, and in particular the fundamental relationship of the figure and its support. In tending toward notions of ancientness and the futuristic, the narrative mythology of his work suggests the representation of a temporal imagining in which ideas of archaeology, antiquity, fantasy and science fiction congeal together in coexistence. His work is resolutely and physically worked: carved, drawn, cast, and built-up from materials such as plasterboard, sheet glass, foam, oil, wax, paper, and bronze.

For this exhibition at Modern Art, Monahan has made seven new bronze sculptures: figures sitting atop bare metal pedestals made as unique casts that outwardly and openly wear the character of bronze as a raw, violent, and immediate material. Accompanying these sculptures in the galleries are a suite of life-sized figurative drawings, linear and austere, but richly materialised.

Matthew Monahan was born in Eureka, CA, USA, in 1972. He lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA. Monahan studied at Cooper Union School of Art, New York, NY, USA; and Gerit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1990-1994). Matthew Monahan’s work is the subject of a survey exhibition curated by Nigel Prince at Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, opening in late April this year. Previous solo institutional shows include: Matthew Monahan, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA (2011); Mineral Spirits: Anne Chu and Matthew Monahan, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, USA (2010); Focus: Matthew Monahan, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2007); African Masks and Fetishes, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2007); Gozaimas, Bureau Stedelijk, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2000); and Zeno’s Quiver, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1997). Monahan’s work has been included in the recent group exhibitions Statuesque, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, USA (2011); The Artist's Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2011); Outside the Box, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2010); Statuesque, Public Art Fund, New York, NY, USA (2010); Between Art and Life: The Contemporary Painting and Sculpture Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, USA (2009); Life on Mars, the 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA, USA (2008); 7th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2008); Unmonumental: Falling to Pieces in the 21st Century, Curated by Richard Flood, Laura Hoptman and Massimiliano Gioni, The New Museum, New York, NY, USA (2007); Eden's Edge: Fifteen LA Artists, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, USA (2007); USA Today, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2006); and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA (2006). A survey of Matthew Monahan’s work is the subject of a monograph published in late 2011 by Hatje Cantz.

For further information, please contact Ryan Moore at Modern Art: ryan@modernart.net