Archival Aesthetic: Art by Matthew Rangel
Sierra Nevada Codex, installation view
Matthew Rangel is a conceptual artist and illustrator based in New Mexico. In his artistic practice, Matthew draws on his experiences growing up between natural beauty and socioeconomic upheaval to inform a scientific, archival aesthetic.
Sierra Nevada Codex, Muro Blanco, etching and lithography
I really enjoy the field-sketch sensibility of Matthew’s works. Even when installed in a gallery space, the artist’s small, illustrative prints take on the appearance of pages from an antique book of scientific or naturalist drawings. In our last feature of Matthew’s artwork, we talked about the artist’s landscape interventions – works in which sketches and photographs of a given natural feature are drawn over, marked, or collaged in such a way as to turn them into something like archaeological notes.
The front page of Matthew's portfolio website
In the context of the artist’s entire portfolio and background, these works reveal a piece of Matthew’s process, and hint at greater overarching ideas that the viewer is left to discover.
