HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

Halsey McKay presents The Other Side of the Coin, Matthew Kirk’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, on view at HMGP in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Known for his inventive use of commercial building materials, Kirk’s latest sculptural works are inspired by the physical components of his studio. Kirk has consistently selected construction goods for his practice, as in his drywall paintings and tar paper weavings. In making The Other Side of the Coin, Kirk finds suggestions in the residual marks on home-made drawing tables and the predetermined shapes of a basketball rim, bricks, cinderblocks, off-cut wood pieces and a found suitcase. He cuts things up and puts them back together again guiding them into new entities through chance alignments of objects, line and shape. These intuitively cobbled forms suggest objects and characters from the natural world like animal hides, birds and human figures. While not specifically representational, they are suggestive of personalities and the room feels filled by a sprightly cast. His surfaces are covered with Kirk’s signature mark-making, notes-to-self, and glyphic imagery reflecting his relationship to his own Navajo heritage and identity. His work often explores the space between hegemonic American visual image of the Native and his lived experience, exploiting the hackneyed to both embrace and question imposed cultural tropes.