The German word nachleben, roughly translated to mean “afterlife,” is an art historical concept drawn from the life of an artwork, which in most cases survives its author. Preemptively enter the underworld through Quintessa Matranga’s rhetoric, as the artist’s latest suite of paintings have already begun their afterlife on their coffin-shaped canvases. These coffins—displaying dislocated body parts bedded in cheetah print, ghouls zipped in leather, demons, dissevered mouths screaming, and dragons descending on hearses—create a poetically macabre narrative between art and distortion, a study of the posthumous by a living artist. Quintessa Matranga’s rhetoric is on view at Sandy Brown from November 12 through December 24, 2018. – Darby Milbrath
Quintessa Matranga’s rhetoric
The German word nachleben, roughly translated to mean “afterlife,” is an art historical concept drawn from the life of an artwork, which in most cases survives its author. Preemptively enter the underworld through Quintessa Matranga’s rhetoric, as the artist’s latest suite of paintings have already begun their afterlife on their coffin-shaped canvases. These coffins—displaying dislocated body parts bedded in cheetah print, ghouls zipped in leather, demons, dissevered mouths screaming, and dragons descending on hearses—create a poetically macabre narrative between art and distortion, a study of the posthumous by a living artist. Quintessa Matranga’s rhetoric is on view at Sandy Brown from November 12 through December 24, 2018. – Darby Milbrath
Read Darby’s interview with Quintessa HERE.