Conceptual artist makes sculptures from discarded plastic laundry detergent bottles to discuss the Southwest’s susceptibilty to climate change.

Contemporary artist Matt Magee (b. 1961, Paris) has been experimenting with abstract and conceptual art practices for forty years. He is best known for his minimal abstract geometric paintings, sculptures, and prints that explore language symbolically with an emphasis on repetition and nods to art historical precedents. In Black and white, Magee presents monochromatic lithographs, photogravures, etchings, and hanging wall sculptures pulled from Tamarind Institute, Woolworth Publications, Manneken Press, Obee Editions, and the artist’s studio. In these works, Magee turns scenes, like a decaying church ceiling in Mobile, Alabama, and civilization’s systems, like industrial agriculture, into works of art that ask what the limits of language are. These works trace a portion of Magee’s prodigious artistic output since 2019 and record his travels across the US working with people in the printmaking ecosystem. The exhibition opens with a reception at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art on February 28 from 5 to 7 PM on the gallery’s ground floor.

The latest works in this exhibition, Carbon and glacier 2, are wall-hanging sculptures made of plastic detergent bottles, wire, and steel rods. As the titles suggest, these grid-like arrays represent two sides of the climate crisis dialogue. On the one hand, we have Carbon. As an element, carbon is the largest component of fossil fuels, the burning of which is responsible for our current climate crisis. On the other hand, we have Glacier 2, a sculpture whose title and color evoke Earth’s ice caps that are melting as a result of climate change — But the climate crisis is not as black and white as it seems. There are other factors at play, like our disposable consumer culture. These sculptures are made from plastic detergent bottles that Magee has sourced from laundromat in Phoenix, AZ. There are millions of these bottles and similar single use containers produced, consumed, and disposed of everyday. Phoenix, with it’s limited water supply and already record-breaking heat waves, represents one of several major metropolitan areas in the Southwest that will be among the first to experience the negative effects of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels and a disposable, non biodegradable consumer culture.

The prints in this exhibition span a 5-year period and were produced with numerous print houses across the US, including Tamarind Institute, across the U.S., including Tamarind Institute, one of the premier fine art lithography studios in the country. Magee’s most recent print, Fascimile, was created in collaboration with a Tamarind student printer and features a black-and-white grid of rectangular shapes. This array of rectangles is not only reminiscent of Glacier 2 and Carbon’s composition, it also resembles a voting ballot, which may be the most powerful weapon the next generation has to fight the climate crisis.

Matt Magee is an American contemporary artist best known for his minimal geometric paintings, sculptures, prints, assemblages, murals, and photographs. Born in Paris in 1961, he currently lives and works in Phoenix, Arizona.

Over a four-decade career, Magee has experimented widely with abstract and conceptual art practices. His compositions draw inspiration from personal history, numerology, and language. He crafts his sculptures and collages using found and collected media. In his paintings and prints, he explores language through abstraction, repetition, reiteration, and the occasional tip of the hat to art historical precedents. His visual language relates to early hard-edge abstraction and finds inspiration in contemporary scientific, ecological, and technological ideas.

Magee is represented by Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, NM; Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston, Texas; Eagle Gallery in London; Inde/Jacobs Gallery in Marfa, TX; David Hall Fine Art in Wellesley, MA; and Mission Projects in Chicago. His work has been exhibited and collected.