For his solo show with Carper Contemporary, I Know Some Nice People, Matthew Choberka releases a body of work that continues to evolve his exploration of figurative elements amidst his typical turbulent abstraction.
“When I suggested giving this show the title, “I Know Some Nice People,” I thought it pretty clever; a way to point toward the way these pictures embody a grotesquery that I perceive just about everywhere in our contemporary lives…in our politics, in our culture. But that’s not really it. At least as important, and very likely much more so, is a reckoning going on with aspects of myself. My imagination, my knowledge, such as they are, all I have to guide me in painting. But, until I have this work mirrored back to me, in the responses of friends, colleagues, I find that I can’t really even fully “see” what it is I am painting. Art demands a self-acceptance that I am not sure is possible for me.”
Matthew Choberka is a painter based in Ogden, Utah and Professor of Art at the Department of Visual Art & Design at Weber State University. Hereceived his BA from Colombia College in Illinois, studied painting and drawing at the New York Studio School, and received his MFA in painting from Indiana University. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with exhibitions at the Torrance Art Museum in California, galleryELL in Brooklyn, Governor’s Island Art Fair in New York Harbor, Raid Projects in Los Angeles, and Beaux-Arts des Ameriques in Montreal, Canada. Choberka is also a represented artist at A Gallery/Allen+Alan Fine Art in Salt Lake City. His current studio practice encompasses oil and acrylic painting, as well as digital painting.
