YOU'RE THE MAN NOW, DOG
January 11th - February 22nd
Opening Reception: January 11th 6-9 pm with artist talk 7:00-8:00 pm
Cleo the Project Space is pleased to present You’re the Man Now, Dog with work by Matthew Flores. This exhibition utilizes commonplace transmissions to address the limits of concise communication through the presupposed advantage of technology.
Armed with an archive of one liners, automation and pop culture references, Flores explores the possibilities of appropriating meaning while performing the role of artist. The use of a fax machine, television set, and Funny Fone become vehicles in this newest body of work for placing the responsibility of interpretation on the viewer. The possibility for miscommunication is at the crux of his set up with the machinery and includes jokes with multiple implications, the looping of audio, and the delayed, or even unavailable, retrieval of imagery. This allows for multiple translations of symbology amidst emotional reflexes like frustration or laughter that curry their own weight in the decisions of the audience when assigning meaning.
All the while Flores himself serves as director of the happenings and performances with just enough of a hand in the work, or reworking, of the art on display to challenge perception. The use of screens and humor as modes of transmission is an act of attracting an audience by the everyday. It is through that direct access of information the work spurns a larger conversation of absurdity in the retrieval of the delivery. With the theatrics of this collection, the gallery is set as a stage for multiple performances that involve the audience as players in the act with their variety of reactions completing the circuit of storytelling.
Matthew Flores is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Knoxville, TN., where he is the 2023-25 Graphic Design Fellow at the University of Tennessee School of Design. His studio practice is rooted in strategies of misdirection and appropriation, and orbits around an interest in how the art viewing experience can be analogized with the format of jokes, performance, and the theatrical.
Recent shows and exhibitions include Jumbo Shrimp at Take It Easy Gallery in Atlanta, GA., Wild Bunch at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Undocumenta 1 in Kassel, Germany, Typos + Spills + Broken Glass at Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. and Give Them the Slip at bitforms Gallery in New York, NY.
He was awarded the 2023 Idea Capital Atlanta Creative Grant, a Creative Residency Fellowship at Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, was selected as one of Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Ones to Watch in 2019, and attended a 2023 Residency at The Luminary in St. Louis, MO. Flores received his MFA in Photography from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia in 2019 and his BA in Art History from the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri in 2015.
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maaaaaaaaaatt.net / @matthewflores