"Matt Wilson – Anglo-Saxon globetrotter –provide ineffable images of the different countries he has traversed."
Like the travel notebooks of Bruce Chatwin, whose writings offered an incredibly sensitive and humanistic vision of an Australia forever lost, the photographic wanderings of Matt Wilson – another Anglo-Saxon globetrotter –provide ineffable images of the different countries he has traversed. Few in number and extremely unique, these modest photographs take contemporary photography head on. Even framed, they are so small in format, they demand viewers to stop and scrutinize the details, much in the manner of a mini-painting filling a seventeenth century cabinet of curiosity. In that same way, they often seem somewhat damaged, as if corroded by the outdated film the artist uses. The visual result is opalescent: the very visible grain and decadent light outline areas of intimate shadows in nocturnal scenes and offer a smoky, misty rendering in daytime landscapes. This studied technique of the possibilities of antiquated emulsion accompanied with a keen vision represents the core of Matt Wilson’s language. As a result, what you see is tripped and a poetic sway is set in motion. This visual structure gradually informs an incidental narrative that reveals fictional lands on the cusp of a lucid dream.