ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I recreate nostalgic imagery with two goals: (1) exploring the materiality of paint and (2) defining nostalgic focus with found/generated imagery through play. Historically, I use painting techniques, collage, or existing photographic processes. Today, these processes continue through my simulations, and conventional techniques are blurred through the use of photosensitivity — by making paint photosensitive to the light of the Sun.

Embracing technical inconsistency and quietness in my work enhances the historicist and ruinous effects that glow like embers from nostalgic objects. My interest lies in re-appropriated nostalgia — play that aims to elicit nostalgia and to encourage a reconstruction of a place free from time. I aestheticize the allure of memory so it may become symbolic of experience, rather than experienced directly.

Play, in the spirit of Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens, is the act of creating a world apart. Play represents both the freedom and emplacement of a grand game. Quiet play is an act — a silent prayer before breakfast. Quiet play in my practice is both an act of maintaining my body of knowledge and conducting compositional experiments. Like a prayer, painting to me is an act of inner reflection — a journey of feeling out for a little world through freedom and discipline.

My art is all dedicated to the betterment of expressing my perception of the times; the process is driven by the quiet play of nostalgia, and reflects the echoes of a timeless memory. With the playful drive, I look towards the pass to imagine what it would be like to experience once again. Yet, what of the future? With all that's happened in the iconoclastic beginning of a third millennium and my experience, I must ask the question:

What does the future of nostalgia look like?


ABOUT ME

I'm Matthew Kratz, an experimental painter and photographer originally from Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 Territory (Calgary). These days, you'll find me creating art in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). I love reading, whether it's for research or just for fun, and I enjoy learning new skills.

I had a fantastic time at art school, which laid the groundwork for my Master of Fine Arts from NSCAD University in 2022. My MFA Thesis Exhibition, The Least Nostalgic, at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, was a highlight of that experience. Beyond my art studies, I also hold a Master of Business Administration from Dalhousie University, which I pursued for a different perspective on who I want to be as an artist.

When I'm not in the studio, I'm often found enjoying the simple pleasures of life in Halifax. I love walking and taking photographs along the Halifax waterfront, and to Point Pleasant Park. I'm also a homebody and enjoy cooking and watching films. As a participant in the local arts scene, I'm proud to volunteer as the Board's Vice Chair of Nocturne Arts Festival, contributing to the vibrant cultural life here. I've also self-published Hey, I See Fires, a collection of my painted recreations of unedited archival images from the Apollo missions to the Moon, a fun project from my art undergrad days.