America at 250, and a Parade’s End

I thought how appropriate that Matt Bollinger would open a new solo show in Dublin, Ireland with mother’s tankstation at the precipice of America’s 250th birthday. He is an artist that has the heart, and heartbeat, to look deep into the psyche of the middle part of the country, look at its hopes, dreams, solace and pain, and find a way to make it move and be a subject of painting. “I think some of them are sad or maybe melancholy,” Matt told me once. “They're not full blown sad. Melancholy is sad with contemplation thrown in. They're a little reflective.” 

Right now, in America, being reflective in the storm of what is MAGA, what has been the country being torn apart for the last decade in a tornado of algorithmic, tampering and overwhelming disparate wealth distribution, the chaos has not really allowed for reflection. Reflection feels like a luxury, and yet, Bollinger is trying to find what it may look like if you were to zoom in on the minutiae of American life and give someone a moment to themselves. To not feel the pressure, the fight, the anger, the sadness, the bitter speeches and the polarizing rhetoric. His influences, both in painting and animations, from American Ashcan School movement, Germany’s New Objectivity, social realism of Mexico or South Africa’s William Kentridge, all have thought about, and understood, the there are stories in people. Maybe not always specific, but there are stories about ordinary people that can make extraordinary art. 

Parade’s End as a title feels poignant, too. America as an experiment and a practice of exceptionalism, for better or worse, feels like it's coming to an end. The parade is a crucial performance in American life. We gather at parades, we celebrate, we mourn, we watch. We bring our families, friends, and we stand with people we don’t know. The parade symbolizes more than it actually achieves, like a gentle pause before new beginnings await. I wonder at times if Bollinger’s paintings, these characters, have been in a pause for so long they no longer know what they were waiting for in the first place. Like the promise of a new day has gone fulfilled, but they wait on the bleachers like they were told to. A parade is a permission to celebrate, with a code of conduct attached. I think in Bollinger’s work, promises and permission are frozen in time. —Evan Pricco