IMN #8 — Matt Kane

It's Monday Night #8

Tonight, let’s share thoughts about @MattKane’s gazers. Mattkane reconnects with one of the oldest functions of art in a way that is, paradoxically, more modern than modernity itself. Let me elaborate.

At first glance, these gazers are curious talismans. They have something immediately anachronistic.

They seem drawn from a time when art was still about rituals whose symbolic effectiveness was directed towards the cosmos - when it was also a device to appropriate the force of the invisible beings, to express the unbearable chaos of the world while protecting ourselves from it.

@MattKaneArtist's gazers are elementary, schematic amulet. A gazer appears to us as a symbol. It seems to contain an enigma. But we must remember what Hegel said, in his time, about the Egyptian pyramids: basically, what a pyramid reveals to us is that the essential is hidden.

The circle, the triangle or the square are, from a geometrical point of view, minimal forms: the smallest difference between a structured matter and a formless matter.

Perhaps @MattKaneArtist is unconsciously quoting Malevitch and his black square on a white background: one remembers the famous window open on a large absence, a scandalous framing operation of a space left vacant.

But @MattKaneArtist's audacity consists in reinscribing the celestial spheres - and the closest of them: the moon - in the empty square: abstraction becomes a refuge for lunar movements.

The history of art had ejected the world from the painting - nature, which had been known for centuries to be written in mathematical language, could no longer be translated into pictorial language.

But @MattKaneArtist takes a decisive step. He rewrites the cycles of the moon in computer language, without giving up the principles of abstraction. Let's say at least two words about the technical aspect of the case.

Since color has always been at the heart of @MattKaneArtist's work, he took the best out of his knowledge and understanding of color theory to create gazers. Gazers are made of the superimposition of colored meshes, that (among others) translate and rotate in a subtle way.

From the colors and the motion of the layers emerge new colors and patterns.The technical aspect of this creation actually goes farther. Indeed, the layers' motions are driven by deterministic algorithms.

Each gazer is initialized based on a date from the past 20 years that correspond to crucial events in the life of the creator. It means that each gazer is originally synced with the moon phase that was observed on that date - called the «origin moon trait».

Every day at midnight, parameters that rule the motion of the layers are modified, which impacts how the gazer will morph for the following 24h, in the same way the moon does. And every new moon phase (approximately every 29 and a half days) the hash seed generates new designs.

It is no longer perspective that allows to organize the space of the visual representation, it is computer programming.

The old astrological belief in a magical influence of the moon, the idea of a secret correspondence between its phases and the smallest earthly events, is now made available for common use - more precisely: open to all possible uses.

f the sun is what makes it possible to see everything but cannot look at itself; the moon is what illuminates the night but captivates the glance. Each gazer puts its collector in the position of a soothsayer: they look for a sign, a clue or the trace of a hidden meaning.

At the same time, contrary to the hegelian pyramid which is, for the spectator, without interiority, the gazer shows its internal architecture: there is no more secret but mystery remains.

We may live in an entirely disenchanted world - under the light of electric spotlights 24 hours a day and colonized by flashing satellites - the resurrection of the bright opacity of the moon is assisted by computer.

Gazer are unique, changing, and ephemeral at every moment. They are eternally unique, changing and ephemeral. Each phase crossed may be perfectly predictable, the very moment of the transformation is immeasurable, fleeting.

There is no pseudo-wisdom of bad psychological magazines horoscopes in @MattKaneArtist's gazers, it is the direct confrontation between the silent visual talisman in constant transformation and the quest of a sign in the hypnotic wanderings of the moon.

Desire: nostalgia for a star, they say; no: lunar eternity answers @MattKaneArtist .What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.