Matt Bollinger seems born to be a great artist. Which means he's really handsome and twisted. His vivid, strikingly colored paintings depict bands in the midst of performances and orgies, and music videos by men with wigs. We spoke to him by phone from his artist's hideaway in Provincetown about RISD, horror movies and the brilliance of Youtube.

Chief Magazine: Name Rank and Serial Number, please.

Matt Bollinger: Bollinger, Matt.

In your last one-man show, the paintings and were drawings of tableau. Is this essential to your work? Would you want to make landscapes or still-lifes?

For the moment I find myself most interested in painting theatrical depictions of narrative scenes.  Generally this involves characters although I can imagine narrative images that don’t have people in them.  Recently I began a still life by trying to imagine what a certain character might have on top of his bureau the morning after a Valentine’s evening [condoms, CD's, a heart-shaped box, jewelry].  

In the show you mentioned I did have a few paintings that didn’t have figures, but they did have television sets, which in that context was a figure-surrogate.  

Are televisions totemic for you?

In my paintings they are often conduits in the way that a ouija board is.  They are related to teleportation and hypnotic states that connect the present place with somewhere far off.  As a figure-surrogate they are similar to a medium in a trance.

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Would you consider yourself a video artist? or is it the raw stuff of paintings?

I sometimes make videos that are pieces in and of themselves.  Most of them find their way to Youtube.   But I also use video as a tool (alongside my digital camera and sketch book) to gather information to help me make paintings.  Video makes posing more casual because there isn’t that “freeze” moment.

Have you always been working from film and video stills?

No.  I’ve never worked with film and only for a short while did I really work with the video still itself.  Now I just use it as a tool amongst others to capture a character’s pose.  In an attempt to get these narratives into a painted world, I have been trying to avoid following the way that photographs tend to flatten and crop images (although I do make a lot of nods to things televisual).

Is it essential to a viewer to know that stills and photos are a starting point for your scenes?

No, but I do think that my images are mediated by photo/video culture and involve characters taking photos or videos.  The cold and acidic colors that I use remind me of video screens.  Lately some of my paintings, in particular the “portraits,” take on that Youtube or webcam point of view.

Is it essential to know that you yourself are often the "model" for these scenes? And, at Gangbusters, you had a painting taken from a still of you in a wig and face-paint and a dress. Could you describe where the inspiration came from?

To the first question:  No.  

The inspiration came in part from a Youtube video (similar to what I mentioned in the prior question) in which a young girl says to the camera: “Hi Guys, These days my mood is unpredictable..Cos two days ago I confessed to someone, and they don't feel the same.. So I'm gonna sing a song.. “   I was interested in making a video piece that was similarly embarrassing and sincere. In the video I sing the Roxy Music song Would You Believe.  Later the footage looked interesting.  I thought that I could make a painting from a still and capture the awkwardness of that character.  So I guess that was an instance of working pretty directly from a video still.

What role do the following have in your creative process:

sex

In the band pictures the figures touch themselves in a kind of trance.  These characters were influenced by Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photo series The Park in which groups of men watch couples have sex in public parks.  Both the men in Yoshiyuki’s photos and the audience in my paintings share a lack in inhibition.  I wanted to suggest that the music (something that the paintings could never depict) was transfixing the audience to such a degree that they entered into this ecstatic state.

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horror movies

I’m really interested in kinds of transformation—physical and emotional.  I was raised Catholic, obsessed with horror movies and comic books, and constantly making drawings of things that I wanted to change into (usually some kind of animal/human hybrid).  Werewolves were of primary interest because their transformations were so dramatic and such a charged part of the narrative—a man turns into a monster while beside his lover who then becomes his prey. I’m interested in making paintings that make emotional rather than logical sense.  If viewers can suspend their disbelief, then something heightened can occur.

bands

I’m interested in depicting bands because seeing shows is a social activity that can involve something very emotional happening.  In other words it can be intimate and public, which is a situation that can leave band or audience members vulnerable.  I have definitely gone to a few shows and felt embarrassed for a singer.  Now I find myself hoping to have someone feel that way when viewing my work.  

One band that really hones the interplay between being vulnerable and rocking is Xiu Xiu.  I’m a ridiculous fan.

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What is the connection with RISD and the current New York Art Scene? Why are people from Providence constantly showing their faces around here?

I don’t know, but we do seem to love New York.

What's with the glowing and colors?

My colors come from what I talked about earlier—making an emotional system.  I have a big glass slab where I spend a lot of time mixing and looking at colors.  Color can inform a viewer’s reading of a painting.  It can make something seem frightening, distant, or dissociative.

What's with the titles?

I developed the titles for my recent show with a poet, Daniel Magers, who is also my oldest friend.  After spending a lot of time talking about the characters and brainstorming lists, those were what we came up with.  I think of them as an opportunity to suggest a character’s voice—something else that painting can’t really depict.  An ideal title for me would send a viewer back into the painting, rather than behaving like an explanation.

We just went to the Armory Show. See anything there that particularly caught your eye?

I was happy to see a few pieces by people whose work I hadn’t seen in person before.  I could make a list but I think I would feel bad if I realized later that I left someone out who I would have liked to mention.  I will say that Hernan Bas had a few paintings that I really enjoyed.   Mostly I found the show very exhausting.

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Website
Matt's blog

Interview by: Steve Roberts

Images courtesy of: Megan Gordon