The Hole is proud to present Reflections, our third solo exhibition by Minneapolis-based artist Mathew Zefeldt. Zefeldt creates paintings of simulated worlds and describes himself as "a contemporary plein-air painter who sets up my easel at the edge of a screen." His work explores the intersection between the real and the virtual, offering reflections that are both uncanny and familiar.

Following the traditions of landscape painters, Zefeldt approaches digital spaces as they might have approached natural vistas: where Turner captured ephemeral clouds or Church depicted sweeping natural landscapes, Zefeldt engages with a simulated world—a space already translated onto a screen with 3D imaging programs, analyzing what that translation might mean visually and conceptually.

Zefeldt's paintings spring from the world of the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V, seeking out moments of chaos and calm. Past series have focused more on the action (think exploding police cruisers and vehicles flying off cliffs) and the range of rich city-scapes within the game, while in Reflections, Zefeldt really looks down and zooms in on the “natural” world. Though only made of code these virtual landscapes are hyper-real and exaggerated for dramatic effect, frame after frame, repeating textures into gorgeous scrolling fields of information.

Reflecting the fragmented nature of digital reality, Zefeldt draws from Andy Warhol’s grid compositions, where repetition underscores artificiality. This compositional tool contributes to the screen-like flatness of the paintings and also suggests the possibility that we occupy multiple parallel realities. In Leaf Logic we see the exact same cluster of leaves nine times, painstakingly painted in perfect pixelation. Two new freestanding paintings bring these unnatural textures into the gallery with more physicality and confrontation. The viewer almost becoming the player within the game, confronted by Ivy or a Stone Facade to navigate.

Zefeldt’s undeniable technique and mastery of paint allows him to have one foot in the machine world: such repetition is not natural to analog life, rather it is the realm of cut-and-pasteable, endlessly iterable images in the digital realm. Stare too long and the pixelated rocks start to move; encountering the exact same flower over and over lends a whiff of the uncanny. If we are fascinated with painting the world around us and we now spend the majority of our lives in constructed virtual worlds, this show finds Zefeldt holding the mirror back to us and ultimately suggesting, perhaps, that we go touch grass.

Mathew Zefeldt (b. 1987, California) is Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Minnesota. He received his MFA in studio art from UC Davis in 2011 and received his BA in Art at UC Santa Cruz in 2009. He has had solo exhibitions at The Hole, NY; Celaya Brothers, Mexico City; Hair + Nails, Minneapolis; Big Pictures, Los Angeles; 5-50 Gallery, Long Island City; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Circuit 12, Dallas; Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Hap Gallery, Portland; and Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica.

He has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions internationally including at The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Saint Paul; Akron Art Museum, Ohio; Currier Art Museum, New Hampshire, and The Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City. Lisa Cooley, NY; The Hole, Los Angeles; Better Go South, Berlin; Night Club, Minneapolis; MOHS Exhibit, Copenhagen; Galerie Fran Reus, Palma de Mallorca; In 2022, Zefeldt was an international resident at the Cob x Plop Residency in London, UK, and in 2023 was an artists in residence at the Moosey Residency in Norwich, UK. Mathew has a new book out titled Mathew Zefeldt: Painting Constructed Virtual Worlds.