Mathew Gasparek’s playful, disorienting still life compositions challenge the classical norm of the genre.
His colorful works skew the geometric dimension of everyday forms in space by allowing elements of reflection, shadow and magnification to deviate from the expected. Through the use of vivid hues and op-influenced patterns to host his compositions, Gasparek comments on the variables of perception that dictate how we navigate deception and illusion in the world around us. These meditations on subjective perception recall influences from cable news or theatrical irony, as the works insist viewers take a moment to organize or debunk what is explicitly given.
Mathew Gasparek earned his BFA in Painting and Drawing with minors in Philosophy and Art History from the University of Wisconsin and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has exhibited extensively in Illinois, Wisconsin and Virginia, as well as at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. Gasparek is the current co-director at Flat Rate Contemporary, an artist-run online gallery, and lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.