Almine Rech is pleased to announce Undertow, Matthew Schreiber's first solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from November 8 to December 14, 2024.

The exhibition features a new laser installation created specifically for the dimensions of the gallery space. Composed of laser light, the installation hovers—magical and fantastical—as the viewer moves through and around a form in which the seemingly solid gives way to the utterly permeable. Through this complex phenomenological experience, we find ourselves navigating a sculptural presence as well as the contradictory material properties of light, which are here rendered in every manifestation: visible and invisible, material and immaterial, enduring and ephemeral. Additionally, four holograms from the artist’s ongoing Orders of Light series present a mesmerizing range of forms and visual experiences conjured solely from the manipulation of light through the holographic process. The exhibition is timed to coincide with a major presentation of Schreiber’s holographic work at the Getty Center Los Angeles, on view through November 24.

While Schreiber came late to the game, historically speaking—and was among the last to study holography at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal College of Art in London before their holography labs closed—he has been an enduring believer. Fresh out of graduate school, as the master holographer of the C Project from 1994 to 1999, Schreiber convinced such artists as John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, and Ed Ruscha, among others, to go back to the future and try their hand with the medium. An extraordinary body of holographic work resulted because of his commitment to the technology. All the while, Schreiber used holography and lasers in the creation of his own art. As holography is dependent upon the laser, Schreiber’s artistic practice has often concurrently considered the two technologies. His distinct approach to and ongoing experimentation with these mediums celebrates the utopian visions posited when technology offered the promise of brighter days, admittedly with a wink and a nod to the fringe elements it has enabled.

(Text by Jenny Moore, writer, curator, and Director of Tinworks Art)