Group Show
“Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.”— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present the second solo exhibition in Miami by artist Mathew McConnell. In Group Show (a solo show), McConnell debuts a series of text-based works derived from descriptions of artworks. In his own words:
“The sixty cast iron panels in this exhibition, produced in residence at the Kohler Arts/Industry program, each bear a short description of another artist’s work. To make them, AI was asked to describe images of selected contemporary artworks and exhibitions. The resulting phrases were then drawn by hand, and each letter digitally modeled and 3D printed as its own imperfect object, before being cast in iron through a sand-casting process.The work is the result of a series of translations, each leaving a trace in the final object. The artworks being described are not named. Each description is specific, yet its specificity is unattached; the source work comes undone in the act of being described. The text becomes fiction, fixed in iron, offering no way back to what it once referred to.In the act of reading, a new artwork takes shape — singular, specific, and attributable only to the viewer. The installation reflects this openness: a shifting selection of panels hangs in small groupings, while others rest on low racks. Works can be easily rearranged, and each configuration represents one of many possible ‘group shows,’ assembled from a larger field and subject to constant change.”
McConnell’s practice balances conceptual rigor with material precision. Each cast panel is meticulously crafted, yet the language it carries remains unstable, unmoored from origin and resistant to verification. By transforming descriptions into autonomous objects, McConnell severs them from their sources and transfers interpretive authority to the viewer. What emerges is not a reconstruction of absent artworks, but a meditation on how meaning is produced, fractured, and reassembled. The work exists less in what it once described than in what it becomes through reading — an artwork completed in the mind of the viewer.
About Mathew McConnell
Mathew McConnell holds an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a BFA from Valdosta State University in Georgia. He has held numerous solo exhibitions including at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami and the Jane Hartsook Gallery at Greenwich House Pottery in NYC. His works have been included in over 80 group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Mathew has lectured widely, and has been subject of feature-length articles in Ceramics Art and Perception, Ceramics Monthly, and New Ceramics.
He has received an Emerging Artist Award from the National Council on Education in Ceramic Art and has been an Artist in Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, Greenwich House Pottery, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CRETA Rome, Belger Arts, and the Kohler Arts/Industry Program. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Ceramics at the University of Arkansas.
