New Yorker Matt Leines has been exhibiting for more than 10 years, but his latest collection, Hyperbolic, has been hailed as both a defining moment and a sea-change in the artist’s career. Perhaps it’s that he has moved back to NYC from a stint in Philidelphia that this progression in style and delivery feels like a fresh start for Leines, but whether he would agree, it’s undeniably new territory.
Hyperbolic sees an expansion in ambition from Leines, alongside an expansion in colour and what we’re going to describe as a broader grounding in reality, although that depends largely on your definition of reality. In the portraits that form the bulk of Hyperbolic, Leines gives us more of the human and less of the abstract, although his subjects certainly won’t be using these surreal renderings as passport photos. The aptly-named Beginnings gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is the venue for the collection exhibition, on show until 5th May.