Alexis Mata
With a background in urban space interventions, Alexis Mata navigates a multitude of media ranging from collage, drawing, painting, installation, and digital media. His work is permeated by a strong social and political burden, referencing death, violence, beauty, and Manichaeism (a former major religion founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian prophet Mani, in the Sasanian Empire. Manichaeism teaches an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness). Informed by living in a country plagued with inequalities, violence and simulacra, Mata’s work aims to encourage social critique amongst viewers.
Mata transforms classical and contemporary images to look cut, glitched or pixelated as a way to investigate aesthetics and perception through visual archetypes. The result is a juxtaposition between the image and what is perceived, and prompts questions about socially accepted norms, representation, and digital-to-analog processes that result in new images with new meanings.
His latest series Espejismos de Origen (Mirages of Origin) explores individual and collective identification processes concerning official histories and national mythologies.
Alexis Mata (b. 1981, Mexico City, MX) is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Mexico City. Mata has managed to navigate through a multitude of media ranging from collage, drawing, painting, installation, and digital art. Mata has been exhibited in different individual and collective exhibitions at a national and international level, including Carrillo Gil Art Museum (CDMX, MX), MUCA Roma (CDMX, MX), MAIA Contemporary (CDMX, MX), Soze Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) Fu Gallery (Miami,FL), Soil Gallery (Seattle,WA), Goldshteyn-Saatorty (Paris,FR), Galeria Nueva (Madrid,ES), Parlor Gallery (Ashbury Park,NJ) & Brick Lane Gallery (London, UK) and Johansson Projects (California).
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Glitched-out oil paintings by artist Alexis Mata show at “The Hole” gallery in Tribeca | December 27, 2024 by Kat Barandy for designboom
Mata’s paintings address themes of transformation and disappearance. Using an analogue-digital process, the artist reinvents still-life compositions into surreal landscapes that challenge the viewer’s perception. Flowers, fruits, and natural elements morph into otherworldly forms, embodying impermanence and evolution. LINK
Psychedelic Distortions and Glitches Streak Across Alexis Mata’s Bold Paintings | December 20, 2024 by Grace Ebert for Colossal
AI experiments help Mata better translate the strange, disorienting outcomes that these rapidly evolving tools can produce. But his research isn’t just visual. “I enjoy experimenting by writing poems or haikus in AI and seeing what emerges. It’s an exploratory process,” he notes. LINK
