Matt Chu

Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Artist statement

I paint to be free. To free myself of the psychological and systematic structures that form the illusions of the ego-self. Known in Buddhist psychology as anattā, or not-self, painting serves as a direct channel to illuminate what my ego is still blind to and dispels the fantasies, traumas and delusions that the ego uses to conceptualize itself as an unchanging, permanent entity. This aspiration for freedom, or rather enlightenment, stems from a lifelong of suffering as a gay Asian Buddhist who grew up with a chronically ill parent. The traumas and shame inflicted upon me serve as sources of inspiration to heal from, and to move on from, as embodied experience has shown me the genesis of suffering stems from grasping onto an essence-less self. The figures in my paintings are therefore not solid and opaque, but rather translucent and transparent, existing between being and non-being. As a former fashion photographer, each painting begins with a source photograph (or several) that is inverted, distorted and duplicated in Photoshop to de-materialize representational reality. By deconstructing what is usually considered as ultimate reality, the photo sketches arrive closer to my inner meditative states and reflect the psychological complexes that still linger in my mind and body - i.e. butterfly wings as confusing transformations for transcendence, muscular male torsos as desires of whiteness and beauty or empty portraits as attachments to the void. As the painting progresses,...

Artwork