MATTHEW SCHREIBER: UNDERTOW

Almine Rech is pleased to announce Undertow, Matthew Schreiber's first solo exhibition with the gallery.

November 8 – December 14, 2024

The exhibition features a new laser installation created specifically for the dimensions of the gallery space. Composed of laser light, the installation hovers—magical and fantastical—as the viewer moves through and around a form in which the seemingly solid gives way to the utterly permeable. Through this complex phenomenological experience, we find ourselves navigating a sculptural presence as well as the contradictory material properties of light, which are here rendered in every manifestation: visible and invisible, material and immaterial, enduring and ephemeral. Additionally, four holograms from the artist’s ongoing Orders of Light series present a mesmerizing range of forms and visual experiences conjured solely from the manipulation of light through the holographic process.

For the past thirty years, Matthew Schreiber has been making art with lasers and holography—technologies that were described at the time of their invention as mediums of the future. Although the theory of holography was first proposed in 1947, it wasn’t until 1962, with the development of laser technology, that holograms became a reality.

Artistic experimentation quickly followed. Artists were drawn to holography for its spatial, volumetric, and sequential qualities—the display of three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional surface. Combining elements of photography, film, and early video, holography was even predicted to become the preferred medium of creative expression for its seeming combination of the two-dimensional aspects of painting with the three-dimensional experience of sculpture.

Perhaps now we will pause long enough to understand that despite our proficiency in manipulating infinitely more sophisticated technological systems, we still can’t quite get our heads around the fundamental principles of light fantastic.