MATTHEW PAULSON: DRIFT LINES

OCTOBER 16, 2021 - JANUARY 9, 2022
OPENING RECEPTION OCTOBER 16 - 3-8 PM

POMPEI is pleased to present Drift Lines, the first solo exhibition from Matthew Paulson. 

Paulson’s practice spans sculpture, painting, textiles, installation, and the documentation of the interactions within his immediate environment. Exploring his surroundings through a performative and systematic collecting of throw-away packaging, advertisements, and beach flotsam, he interprets found materials through a meditative process with playful outcomes. Embellishing these objects through craft, camouflage, and subtle and subversive engineering, Paulson disrupts the prefabricated and single-use nature of these materials, creating new forms for contemplation and exchange.

“My process often begins with gathering material evidence, images and objects that drift through my life, searching for that which is largely useless and forgotten, part of a silent ominous backdrop of visual white noise. The scavenged materials’ original functions are abandoned wholly or in part and are re-conceptualized in the studio through low-tech craft and tools that melt, mask, bind, and fragment. Snack packaging, newspaper real-estate ads, parking tickets, junk mail, and washed up litter, memories of quotidian and anonymous desires and struggles become reimagined performative props for communication and reflection on our environment, social equality, and history.”

- Matthew Paulson

Matthew Paulson studied art at Atlanta College of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art, earning a BFA in 2001 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006. He has exhibited in group exhibitions in New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, San Francisco, Washington DC, Miami, and Berlin. Paulson currently lives and works in Rockaway Beach, Queens.

matthewjpaulson.com / @majapapajama

POMPEI is a creative project space and gallery founded by J Grabowski and Jacqueline Pompei. POMPEI is open to the public Saturdays and Sundays, 2-6 pm, and Monday-Friday, by appointment.

pompeinewyork.com / @pompei_ny