Body Language  -  2010  -  V1 Gallery (City)

Matthew Stone’s (b. 1982) human landscapes  are monumental and simple, strong and fragile. His mounds of naked bodies  are presented as multidimensional beings full of life.  

The pivotal questions are of separation  and return, of challenges to perceptions of individuality. Separated  bodies physically return; placed together to undergo a romantic mutation  that enables a metaphysical reconnection. Stone uses the interplay of  light and darkness to follow sculptural curves and surfaces, awakening  the imagination’s desire to delve into the (c)overt.  

It is this polarisation that creates  the fields of tension in all of Stone’s works. Our surroundings and  ourselves often seem divided into irreconcilable binaries: right/wrong,  light/dark, good/evil, I/other.  Rather than rejecting these overly  simplistic, seeming contradictions, Stone proposes new contexts for  their powerful co-existence. 

In his performative rituals and collectively-minded  shoots the camera becomes a shamanic tool used to invoke and create  history, rather than to document it. With art as his weapon of choice  Matthew challenges fear and denudes a newly defined optimism that not  only sheds light on (wo)man, but also on the endless possibilities we are  all composed of.  

Matthew Stone was recently named the  most influential living British artist under 30 by The Sunday Times  and Norman Rosenthal, curator and critic, has drawn comparison to the  energy of a young Hirst. This is Matthew Stone’s first solo exhibition  in Denmark.