"MaterPolis"

Featuring Susan Chen, Susanna Coffey, Lindsey Brittain Collins, Ian Decker, Emily Henretta, Farah Mohammad, Clintel Steed, Stipan Tadic, Matthew Woodward, and Yuri Yuan

From expansive cityscapes to intimate public encounters, MaterPolis gathers 10 artists whose works explore what it means to live in a city. Building from traditional landscape painting, the artists use a variety of traditional and non-traditional mediums to present firsthand views of urban scenes.

Reflecting a shared interest in surface and material process, glowing color and rhythmic compositions layer a sense of immediacy with the slow time of construction. Inhabiting architectural imagery, the artists question how the built environment shapes human experiences of identity, race, history, community, isolation, and intimate otherness.

As people begin to move back into shared spaces after two years of domestic distancing, MaterPolis kindles a sense of untold and overtold stories, of the change and continuity housed within the generational lines of the city. 

Header Image:
Susanna Coffey
Montrose Harbor, 3/16/12, 2012 (detail)
Oil on panel
3 x 5 inches
Courtesy of the artist