Matts Leiderstam

The Artist is at Niagara Falls, 2001
Matts Leiderstam mines art historical artifacts as sources, in search of complicated alternative readings and cultural messages. Peformative and scholarly, Leiderstam’s Returned project, of which The Artist is at Niagara Falls is a part, mingles a "queer" reading on the Arcadian landscape with investigation of the encoded acts of looking through which viewers take pleasure. Working from easel paintings— ranging from Nicolas Poussin’s pastoral visions to, in this case, a view of Niagara Falls by an anonymous artist— Leiderstam repaints originals in the gallery, re-sites his copies in settings that layer new meanings onto the images and photographs the entirety in this carefully chosen context. At times he leaves his copies in situ, to accrue meaning there; at others he presents the painted copies alongside photographs for gallery installation. Characterized by a social contemporaneity, sensitivity to place and art historical savvy, Leiderstam’s work interrogates photography as an active medium of transformation and translation in the cultural realm. Paradise in Search of a Future presents selections from Leiderstam’s Returned project, as well as this new piece undertaken in conjunction with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

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Leiderstam will be painting in the Albright-Knox galleries from September 19 to October 5, Tuesday –Sunday 1-4 pm.
Matts Leiderstam’s The Artist at Niagara Falls was commissioned by CEPA Gallery through the Art Works! residency program, with the help of the Albright Knox Art Gallery. Additional support for Leiderstam’s exhibition was provided by IASPIS, the International Studio Program in Sweden. Courtesy of the artist, Andrehn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm, and Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunerts, New York.