New York artist Mathew Tucker and 14 other artists from around the world will have paintings on exhibit at Fivesparks Nov. 2 through Dec. 18, with an opening reception Nov. 7 from 3 to 5 p.m. Tucker and several of the other artists will attend the reception. Called “Mediated Landscapes”/“Portals and Thresholds,” the show features a variety of interpretations of a contemporary art movement called plastic realism. Mark Mikitarian, president of the Fivesparks board, said of the upcoming event, “Our team is so excited to bring this international exhibit to Harvard, where landscapes are so much a part of our daily experiences. These innovative works straddle the line between realism and imagination—unlike the landscapes we are accustomed to viewing.”
A landscape from Mathew Tucker’s “Portals and Thresholds” series. (Courtesy photo)
Tucker has a Harvard connection and has visited town a number of times and seen the evolution of a cultural collaborative on the Common. He was originally invited to Fivesparks pre-COVID, and when he was rescheduled, the dates corresponded to a show in New York he would be doing. Not having enough of his own work accessible to fill the gallery space at Fivesparks and seeing an opportunity to involve a broader range of the movement of which he is a part, he used Instagram to invite other artists to an exhibit he would curate. He was interested in seeing the impact of so many works of a similar philosophy shown together.
Each of those artists, who range in age from 20 to 50 and none of whom Tucker knows personally, will have between one and three pieces, all under 30 inches in width. Tucker himself will have two large paintings, 6 feet by 5 feet, but most of his pieces are medium size, and some as small as 6 inches by 4 inches. He described his work as “approachable and intimate rather than a grand gesture.”
Surrealism, extended
Although I knew Tucker is originally from England, in our recent phone conversation I was at first surprised—and delighted—by his British accent. He talked about some of the common themes and ideas behind plastic realism. The movement is not didactic, but Tucker said the artists are thinking about and pointing to some common recognitions. Their art is neither representational nor abstract; it is an extension of surrealism in which the artists are playing with realism and pointing to the not real, said Tucker. The term plastic realism seems to capture the idea that the artists are acknowledging that their art doesn’t capture the real thing; it’s impossible to catch the item itself.
Another theme is the separation of man and nature, the idea that humans have ceased to care for the environment. In titling the collection by other artists “Mediated Landscapes,” Tucker is conveying the idea that the artist is deliberately intervening between the viewer and the landscape to show this separation. Of his own work he writes: “These paintings probe at a perceived separation between us and nature, an otherness about the natural world. Instead of the romantic and sublime illusion of traditional landscape painting, these works point to the gap between the landscapes and ourselves.”
The influence of technology
Tucker said today’s artists are very much influenced by the technology of recent decades, noting that landscapes, people, and objects are often seen through phones or on computers and TV. There is a definite separation between the real thing and one’s perception of it through some sort of lens, a filter. In various ways, artists deliberately call attention to the not real. In his “Portals and Thresholds,” Tucker uses a window or door frame to mark the separation between real and unreal, inside and outside, us and nature. But this separation is also an illusion because our reality exists only in the context of the landscape. His paintings’ portals and thresholds invite us to look at a fabrication of a landscape, a stage set, where excessively realistic details are juxtaposed with an unreal scene. The frame separates the viewer from the image. In these landscapes, the viewer may feel a strong sense of aloneness, both in the outside scene but also in the interior, where objects, though ordinary, are not in familiar proportions or places.
As the conversation went on, we agreed that art has to speak for itself, that it’s difficult to capture art in words. “It doesn’t meet the experience,” said Tucker, but there are “bullets,” concepts to think about. Talking about art gets you thinking, he said.
Tucker said he realized he wanted to be an artist relatively early, in his mid-teens, but, persuaded that it would not be feasible to make a living that way, he studied graphic art and design in London, and for 10 years he worked a number of different jobs while he figured out what made him happy. In his early 30s he went to Ireland to study for a Bachelor of Fine Arts and fell in love with being back in school. He chose New York City for further study because it would be a new and exciting place where he would be surrounded by art. He graduated in 2016 from Hunter College with a master’s degree in fine arts, specializing in painting.
His childhood may have influenced Tucker’s readiness to move to new countries. Growing up, with the family following his father’s career, he lived in the city of Abu Dhabi as well as in Qatar, Bahrain, and St. Lucia. Although he went to boarding school in the U.K. from the time he was 11, he enjoyed traveling and the out-of-doors in these warm places on school holidays.
For a number of years, Tucker worked out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings have been shown at numerous galleries, art spaces, and exhibitions, and his work is in public and private collections in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, the U.S., and more. When the pandemic hit, Tucker and his wife, with their two young daughters, moved to Wilton, Connecticut, where they can continue to work out of their home.
On the lovely October day that we talked, Tucker was outside with his 4-year-old daughter, Bo, while her little sister napped inside. After quite a long time, Bo wanted more of her dad’s attention, and he put her on the phone to say hello to me. Clearly there’s nothing plastic about Tucker as a dad. And whatever is “plastic” in his art, the emotion and curiosity his paintings evoke are real and profound.
