With a practice formerly concerned with figuration, Matt Kleberg’s recent work offers the absence of any depicted actor. Pregnant spaces and the presence of the hand imply the possibility of the figure, and, by extension, implicate the viewer in their own embodiment. The insistent framing in all of the work, and the sculptural elements of some, reiterate that the paintings themselves are objects or bodies in space.
Kleberg works on paper to workshop potential painting compositions. They are iterated and reiterated over and over until something pops, at which point he jumps over to a larger canvas. Showing the paintings and drawings in dialogue together encapsulates a full process on the wall- conception, iteration, and realization.

The two big paintings featured in this exhibition are called Boxspring Slipstream and Splitscreen Slipstream. Kleberg expresses that he’s drawn to the idea of a slipstream, this space one passes easily through, almost as if carried along, juxtaposed with boxspring and splitscreen, both more or less ideas/forms that play with flatness, frames, supports. This interest is shown in recent work; an interest in a tension between seeing the paintings as invitations to entry and as barriers.