Exhibition: Six Winds

Matt Hoyt, Internal Order, 2008-2019, Epoxy based putties, plastic, epoxy resin, polymer clay, metal, pastel, acrylic and oil paint, 4.875 × 6.5 × 3.5 in.

Bureau is pleased to announce Six Winds, Matt Hoyt’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. Hoyt is best known for his diminutive and absorbing sculptural works. Here he presents approximately 30 new pieces, each an engrossing amalgam displayed atop small shelves which dot the walls. The new works lean toward assemblage and were prompted by the rediscovery and repurposing of works initiated over the course of the last 20 years. An introduction to the exhibition will be provided by a single painting by Dave Miko, a long-time friend of the artist. Inside the main gallery, Hoyt has designed an architectural intervention which diagonally bisects the room, creating new surfaces and spaces for close, contemplative looking.

Hoyt’s new composites are made from diverse materials: many plastics, putties and clays as well as fragments from some of his earliest extant pieces. By cutting, reshaping, joining and embellishing, Hoyt has built up a group of strange and fascinating objects from variously tinted spikes, spheres and many as-yet unnamed shapes. In contrast to his previous show, which carried a solemn, hermetic and internal tone, here the artist’s concern shifts outward to offer a rich and catalytic visual space. This new collection conjures complex symbiotic structures: a cache of instruments, totems, alters, tools or weapons from an imagined future or alternate past. The objects have a magnetic, or sticky visual quality, in part because their textured and sandy finishes capture and hold the viewer’s gaze. The compositions themselves have a captivating intricacy which invites imaginative association and projection.

Any given spark may originate a new work; “I will use practically anything that can serve as a starting point for a piece: a mental image, a vague notion, a memory, material experimentation,” Hoyt says. Indeed, he reminds us with his work that there is an inextricable connection between the mental and physical, between thought and action. At turns intricate and beguiling, sometimes beautifully simple, Hoyt’s objects subtly open up an abstract mental space for the viewer to imagine and wander.

Matt Hoyt (b. 1975, Mount Kisco, NY) lives and works in New York. Hoyt received his BFA in 2000 from the School of Visual Arts. Solo exhibitions include Chrysalis, Bureau, New York, 2017; Recent Past, 2010–2016, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, 2016; One Another, Art in General, New York, 2015; It’s Always Nice to Meet You, Bureau, New York, 2014; 2006- 2011, Bureau, New York, 2012; Escalator to Common Art (with Mark Van Yetter), Dispatch, New York, 2008. His work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial; MoMA PS1’s 2010 Greater New York and Jay Sanders’s 2009 White Columns Annual. Recent group exhibitions include: Zentrified!, cur. by Ken Johnson, Thomas Park, New York, 2019; 10 Years: 100 Sculptures, curated by Todd von Ammon and Joseph Ian Henrikson, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City, 2018; Objects Like Us, cur. Amy Smith-Stewart and David Adamo, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, 2018; Strange Attractors, cur. Bob Nickas, Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles, 2017; Sunlight arrives only at its proper hour, cur. Mitchell Algus and Olivia Shao, 356 Mission, Los Angeles, 2017. In 2013 Hoyt received the Grants to Artists Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His work is in the public collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.