Through a weird series of happenings, I have come to understand that the unconscious understands science or nature in a way that is not didactic or empirical, but may come from the stages of evolution, from whatever life was before it was life to where we are now. The history or memory of past incarnations may be in our DNA, or it may be buried in our unconscious….Maybe what we call biomorphic abstraction comes from a series of people who had relaxed enough to understand their relationship to their past forms or mutations. – Matthew Ronay
Whimsical and mysterious, Matthew Ronay’s carved wooden sculptures come from the artist’s fully contained universe of biomorphic forms. His blend of surrealism, science fiction, and biology allows the basswood sculptures to register as both familiar and alien, skirting the line between representational and abstraction. In Linen and Leather Membrane, the artist fills the work with playful tension, seen in the suspended bulging forms, off-kilter “feet”, and the contrast between the carved raw wood, purple string, and glowing gold body of the sculpture. The soft, matte surfaces and bright colors add to their peculiar presence as meticulously handmade objects. Ronay’s largest work to date is currently on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Matthew Ronay: The Crack, the Swell, an Earth, an Ode and his sculptures can be found in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, LACMA, Los Angeles; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; the Whitney Museum, New York; and MoMA, New York.
