Matthias Neumann
(New York, b.1969, Germany)

Basics #38 (for Brancusi), 2019
Wood (2 x 4)6’ x 22’ x 4’

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Educated as architect my work fluctuates between a wide range of media, with a particular focus on installations in the public sphere. While my work remains diverse, a recurring interest is the détournement of space, material assembly and related processes in ways that allow the audience to appropriate the work and to question notions of material and spatial ecology, negotiating usable versus visual experience of form and space. It is within this context that I consider the majority of my work as an extended practice of architecture or site-specific spatial intervention.

Over the past 4 years I have been engaged with a series of public interventions under the title “Basics”, exploring an abstracted notion of form, space and utility in public sculpture. Conceived as part of a larger museum installation at theNational Museum of Contemporary Art in Romania, the series has since had a substantial number of iterations throughout the US. While each object is individual and specific to its site, the work wants to be understood as a series of explorations relating to the specifics of temporary public art.