The fluid and intermingling forms of Manuel Mathieu’s paintings express multiple, hybrid, and unstable identities. The barely perceptible shapes emerging from these swirling pigments, stitched cutouts, and abrasive textures suggest that no person can ever perfectly be individuated from the historical and social conditions that shape them.
Amid the unsettled surface of A Study on identity, fragments of embroidered black patterns are embedded into the canvas like scars or sutures. These elements offer a sense of disruption and continuity, anchoring the viewer in a rhythm that suggests both harm and repair. In Autoportrait-0322, the artist presents himself as an accumulation of marks and textures, with little to separate figure from ground, subject from context. The painting “is a cross between a figure and a landscape,” says Mathieu, “and the work is constantly treading this line.”
