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An Out-of-Body Experience Inspired These Weightless Photos of Paint Strokes

Art shaman Matthew Stone creates kinetic images of colorful strokes of paint.
All images courtesy of the artist

Whether he was working in performance, dance, or photography, for years much of Matthew Stone’s practice focused on the ecstatic possibilities of the human form. So his more recent works, beautifully kinetic altered photographs of paintbrush strokes, seem all the more bewilderingly abstract in comparison. But to Stone, his work featuring bodies and his newer creations are related. "I photographed the body in a way that encouraged you to look beyond it and towards abstraction, and now there is still something of the body in these new abstract works,” he tells The Creators Project  "When you look at these painterly works, you are effectively looking at bodies as I see them. So maybe when you look at my photographs of human bodies you should find something of abstract painting."

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The empty space that marks Stone’s painting practice is inspired by an out of body experience. "On the spring equinox of last year, I found myself rising out of my bed and able to move around,” he writes. "I wanted to render a sense of the limitless space that opened up in front of me as I left my body.” This sense of weightlessness, of freedom through formlessness, pervades  the works, which seem almost blissfully airy and light.

Though Stone’s body-focused works are related to his abstract pieces, there is an important difference: in working with abstract forms Stone doesn’t have to contend with the politics of the body. His friend and fellow artist Phoebe-Collings James suggested that Stone had perhaps unconsciously needed respite from the body politics inherent in working with nudes. "Nude bodies almost immediately illicit assumptions, mainly of gender and ethnicity; and in placing them together you have to make a series of complex decisions about how power and hierarchy might end up being implied. I think she was right and I guess paint-strokes just aren't as problematic. So I'm taking some time to think about how I use other people's bodies and the images I will make in the future.”

To learn more about Matthew Stone’s work, click here.

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