Matthew Ballou

July 21, 2010 University of Missouri

I create paintings, drawings and prints in an attempt to address – through archetypal themes and symbols – the fundamental questions, ideas, hopes, and concerns I have about being in the world.

Recently this general approach has manifested in my exploration of the morphology of the body – its shapes, angles and internal relationships of parts – as a cipher for or vision of human knowledge. That is, I have been exploring a subjective epistemology through pictorial investigations of the human body. This means that I seek to show, via the shifting, chimeric form of the body, some sense of how it is we experience knowing. My hope has been to locate an evocative communicative space for the image of the body that lies somewhere between icon, illustration, and depiction but is all of these and none of these at the same time.

Matthew Ballou

www.eikonktizo.com