Installation view of Matalyn Zundel’s “No Woman Is an Island” at Finch Lane Gallery with, from left, “The village can only take you so far,” “And in the end the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself,” “Everyone’s gotten really good at the same thing,” and “She is the line that ties me to things.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.
“When I set out to start this series, I had spent two years doing only self portraits, and I got so bored of it,” says artist Matalyn Zundel during the opening reception for her latest show, No Woman Is an Island. “I just started painting my friends, and I wanted my references to be in the wild and not posed, and certainly not forced…I wanted it to be casual but at the same time, worthy of memorialization.” Zundel is a master of proportion, manipulating perspective to render her subjects larger than life. The ten-piece exhibition, composed entirely of large-scale oil paintings, features portraits of women, viewed through various lenses, all of whom the artist knows personally.
“We often joke that we raised each other,” says Zundel in reference to an up-close and personal portrait of her best friend eating 99-cent ramen. The works comprising No Woman Is an Island capture raw, unfiltered moments that reflect a sense of authenticity within the female experience. “She is the line that ties me to things” is striking upon first glance. The imposing scale of the painting contrasts with the intimate, close-up perspective of the subject; yet a sense of intimacy is created, as if you were sitting across from someone at the kitchen table. The subject’s eyes are soft, her position relaxed and unforced, her gaze declaring a resolute presence that is neither forced nor understated; she simply is. “I use oil paint for its texture and for its forgiveness…its bones can be buried under a layer that is thicker and more confident than the one that came before,” comments Zundel in her exhibition statement. The artist’s intentional and blurred strokes blend the confines of her pieces, making them become all too familiar, so that “She is the line that ties me to things” suddenly transforms into the Polaroid photo stuck on your refrigerator or tucked patiently into your wallet.
Matalyn Zundel’s “She is the line that ties me to things.”
“Rage becomes her” shares a similar perspective, yet strikes a new chord altogether. The viewer has a chance to get even closer to the subject, taking a nearly fish-eyed lens to a woman staring off into the distance, cropped close for confrontation. Scribbled neatly in the upper right corner of the piece is the line, “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you could not believe.” The subject seems to peel from the sage background, her face paused, suspended halfway between admiration and irritation. It is said that the parts of your brain that feel love and disgust are the same, and Zundel seems to capture this within the same frame as the complexity of female emotion.
Zundel has a profound ability to capture specific moments that are too understated to articulate, yet too resonant to forget. In painting the women in her life, she finds recurring motifs in her practice. “When I started this piece, I had the intention to fill in those other figures, and it just kind of happened,” says Zundel in reference to “The village can only take you so far.” It’s a portrait of Zundel’s sister, sitting at a table in a restaurant surrounded by other figures, none of whom are fully complete. She stares into her phone while everyone else seems to melt away, their undone faces becoming part of the woodwork. “I like that she’s on her phone and alone in the space even though she’s surrounded by people, that feeling everyone can relate to, being alone in a crowd,” Zundel says. Loneliness seems to be a pervasive emotion throughout the exhibition, often married with a modern setting and intentional colors.
Sitting alone on the far back wall of the exhibition is Zundel’s sole self-portrait in the show, “Except Me.” “The title of my show is this lame thing I do in my journal, I read this poem forever ago called ‘No Man is an Island,’ and sometimes when I’m feeling particularly angsty, I’ll write in my journal “No Man is an Island, except me”, and go off about whatever. So I wanted my show to be titled ‘No Woman is an Island,’ and that piece is titled, ‘Except Me.'” By far one of the most emotional works in the exhibition, it pictures Zundel on a floral couch, her posture slumped and casual, the dark window behind her obscuring the line between night and early morning. The work exhales, releasing a sense of stillness that is both comforting and isolating. Much like the subject in “Rage becomes her,” Zundel’s expression in “Except Me” carries an emotion that remains with the viewer long after. The feeling of loneliness creeps in once more. “It was, and is, radical for a woman to represent another woman on canvas,” says Zundel, but even more radical is the act of portraying oneself with such raw honesty.
“I kept coming back to this idea that women are not one thing, and it sounds so simple but for whatever reason, media, and how [women] are portrayed, just doesn’t understand that,” says Zundel. It is rare to find even so-called unfiltered depictions of women that are not trying to persuade you in some way. No Woman Is an Island delivers just that: unfiltered, honest portraits.
Installation view of Matalyn Zundel’s “No Woman Is an Island” at Finch Lane Gallery with, from left, “Rage becomes her,” “Hey Google, Happy New Year” and “Except me.” Image by Shawn Rossiter.
No Woman Is an Island, Finch Lane Gallery, Salt Lake City, through May 30.
Avery Greig always has something to contribute. Whether lost in an art exhibition, meandering in downtown salt lake, or haunting a museum, she always has something to say when it comes to art. With her BA in Art History from the University of Utah, she loves sharing her passions for art and writing wrapped up in one.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts
