Matt Haffner
“Like trying to remember a dream that is fading fast, or wondering if a memory is true or invented from some nighttime hallucination, the works in Half Light are fueled by a combination of personal narratives blended with scenes from mythology, the occult, paganism, historical folklore, urban legends, and bedtime stories of witches. The works address moments too difficult to describe, where elements come together to create surreal and otherworldly experiences.
These atmospheric works describe an empty and expansive environment populated with moments of uncomfortable isolation and crystalline intensity. They depict a muted and lonely landscape disrupted by dreamlike instants of energized interactions.
In this exhibition, large installations force viewers to back away while small works draw the eye for inspection. Humble materials and simple processes are elevated through innovation, attention to detail, and meticulous craft. As visually quiet works, they create an experience that promotes inspection and contemplation while traversing layered narratives and ambiguous story telling.
Enshrouded within a penumbra, characters emerge and recede into the mist. This work explores the activity taking place in the peripheries of our sight and the edges of our understanding. Obscured vignettes suggest looking through dirty cabin windows or steamy car windshields at glimpsed scenes that unsettle, yet draw the viewer in for closer inspection.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Matt Haffner is a mixed media artist who works in a variety of materials. These often include newspaper, spray paint, cardboard, salvaged street signs, wheat paste, and industrial pencils, which give his pieces a frenzied, chaotic feel and show his roots as a street artist. Large-scale site-specific installations and smaller works on paper examine the artist’s memories of growing up in the urban Midwest. These personal narratives are woven together with mythologies and folklore to illuminate surreal and otherworldly experiences.
Haffner’s works are in a variety of public and private regional, national, and international collections. He has won countless awards and grants in support of his work, including a National Endowment for the Arts Project Award, MOCA Georgia’s prestigious Working Artist Award, and a Forward Arts Foundation Award. His works additionally, have been published in a variety of books, magazines, web pages, and periodicals.
Matt Haffner is based in Atlanta, Georgia and is Professor of Photography and Video at Kennesaw State University.