NEW YORK, NY.- rodolphe janssen announced its sixth participation at The Armory Show in September 2026 with a solo project by Matthew Hansel (born 1977, Front Royal, VA, USA; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA), who presents a series of new paintings.
artist statement:
In his 1891 essay entitled, “The Critic as Artist”, Oscar Wilde wrote, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Wilde asserts that people are unreliable narrators when restricted by the confines of selfhood. It is necessary then, that we find a way to subvert the self, so that we may be free from convention and express ourselves fully. It is the use of the mask (literal or figurative) that shields us and offers us protection from the world around us; from the norms, customs and mores of our time. These masks are part costume and part armor. We inhabit them in order to give ourselves permission to tell the truth.
It is common wisdom that a well functioning society necessitates a rational self sustaining effort from its members. This order is maintained by focusing attention on our faults and foibles while greeting the creative act with suspicion. The cold light of society is unforgiving and intends to lay us bare. We are blinded by it and frozen in our nakedness. So, we adopt masks and costumes which allow us to reveal our true thoughts and artistic expressions. These vestments can be literal or figurative and help bring to light our inner worlds. We assume anonymous personas, play characters, create online avatars, perform artistic roles, code switch, and design our exteriors in order to reveal ourselves. It is ironic that the scrim of the “other” creates space to find oneself, that anonymity gives us permission to be known, and that personal amnesty can be conferred to us by something as tiny as a clown’s nose. If it’s true that all the world’s a stage, then we must turn the cold light of society into a spotlight that helps to illuminate who we truly are.
We perform our lives as much as we live them. We construct our own story; compose our own personal narrative. It is strange and paradoxical that we must become ghost writers in order to do so. It is imperative to step outside ourselves and see ourselves from the vantage of the other. This is as much an act of inclusion as it is exclusion—what we choose to show the world is just as revealing as what we hide. What is left unspoken is sometimes louder than what is said. In this group of paintings, I’ve focused my attention on this conundrum—using the symbol of the mask and the costume to manifest the self. What should we show and what should we conceal? Which face is our own and which is the mask we use to express our internal selves? Which inner demons do we embrace and which do we spurn?
The characters in my work are in the act of discovery—which can be a very uncertain state. They are revealing themselves to the viewer—as we all do—by donning costumes, wearing masks and choosing what to reveal. They use the creative act as a means to tussle the sheets and see what lies hidden in the folds. The paintings are inhabited by tiny worlds where inner demons and hidden desires dwell. I think of these worlds as liminal spaces. They are the microcosms that exist within the macrocosm; the feelings and thoughts that are often concealed in the interior of the mind. More than anything, I am using the creative act to show that we are all involved in creation, constantly, of the self and that a painting can act as a mirror that shows us something about our need to be seen and understood for who we are; how we wear masks to show our true face; how costumes become our second skin; how we use the creative act as a means to tell the truth.
Influenced by the Dutch Masters such as Hieronymus Bosch and William Kalf, Matthew Hansel’s paintings create worlds of heaven and hell, remixing art styles and exotic ideas from the depths of his unbridled imagination. Universes imagined by Hansel attract and repel in equal measure as they blend amazing oil painting skills with the irrational mind. Letting himself be seduced by his demons, Hansel creates artworks that allow us to safely contemplate things that normally scare or disgust us, like death and monsters, while also considering what is contemporary about these vintage uglies. The artist’s career began with recreating Dutch master paintings for movie sets, and this experience continues to influence his work as his paintings all act as an homage to art history. Hansel describes himself as a child of the change from an analog to a digital world, and his oeuvre serves as a visual consequence of this development.
Matthew Hansel had solo presentations at rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium; Wasserman Projects, Detroit, MI USA; The Hole, New York, NY USA; PM/AM, London, UK; Yuka Contemporary, Tokyo, Japan, among others. Group presentations include Museum MORE, Gorssel, The Netherlands; Perrotin, Paris, France; Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China; Rolando Anselmi, Rome, Italy; Lee Eugean Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY USA; Gagosian Gallery, Athens, Greece.
