Brooklyn Magazine
The Off-Kilter Seduction of Painter Matthew Hansel
September 8, 2023
by Vittoria Benzine

The Hole is delighted to share Matthew Hansel's cover story with Brooklyn magazine featuring his painting for Armory 2023.

"The Greenpoint building that’s home to the studio of Matthew Hansel has a fun house feel to it. Visitors slip off a muggy, industrial street into a twisting, air-conditioned lobby sleekly lit and lined with big, abstract paintings of bright colors in soft aerosol. The uncanny thrives in Hansel’s narrow workspace, which is wallpapered in reference images, with dense thickets of paint tubes on every flat surface.

Only a few paintings in progress are on the walls at any time — a large work, a few small ones. Naked beauties, inspired by brochures from the 1960s and ’70s advertising West Coast nudist colonies, cavort on beaches and at house parties alongside various demons. Vibrant still lifes burst with slimy snails and pregnant pears. Painted in oil with vintage-tinged realism and vivid hues, Hansel’s maximalist scenes allure and unsettle.

'I want to seduce the viewer,' Hansel says, 'but I like having these things that keep you off-kilter.'

After honing his craft for decades while in academia and during a long detour through the entertainment industry, Hansel has hit a career stride, smashing solo shows at The Hole’s New York and Los Angeles galleries. An objet d’art in its own right, the artist’s first-ever monograph, 'Inner Demon Delectatio,' dropped at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair in August.

Recent art press has his back, too. Art Verge has dubbed him 'the torch carrier of contemporary surrealism.' Art Now LA gushed that his work is “properly debaucherous.” The Brooklyn Rail considers his aesthetic “equal parts playground and high-stakes morality play.”

This month, he’s got work in the glitzy Armory Show. His latest series, which he started three years ago, clearly resonates, blending technical prowess with a new concept: a paradise where people party with their inner demons.

Society has always been at odds with itself. But our current always-on culture has accelerated and accentuated our fissures. Invisible demons abound. Hansel makes them real. He makes them beautiful and fun, not scary. And his work seems to have finally tapped a nerve.

'It’s difficult and perhaps disheartening to try and gauge success in the art world,” Hansel says. 'It’s so fickle and intertwined with the art market — a market that is poor at identifying and rewarding artists who aren’t ‘on theme.’ However, I get immense satisfaction from being in the studio.'"

A Sudden Reassessment of Man's Gifts, 2022, Oil on canvas, 78 x 130 inches, 198 x 330 cm.

Dancing On The Toes Of Our Shadows, 2023, Oil and flashe paint on canvas, 70 x 56 inches, 178 x 142 cm.

Read the full article here and for a free copy of Brooklyn Magazine with Matthew Hansel's cover story visit The Hole Bowery, while supplies last.