Matthew Sweig

Matthew Sweig is not only a prodigiously gifted painter but also a landscape architect – one will be amazed by his astonishing representational ability. He can make black and white paintings that look remarkably like black and white photographs, with much stronger texture.

His show Arable land at XEXE gallery in Toronto:

Arable land is an agricultural term used to describe land that can be used for growing crops. Agriculture is the key development in human history that enabled humans to develop and maintain complex societies. Agricultural production has provided a reliable, predictable food source and out of this abundance, human civilization has grown.

Today agriculture has been pushed further and further from our everyday experience. The means of producing food is disconnected from urban populations, both geographically and psychologically. The very cities that agriculture has made possible now sprawl over the earth that once fed them. Still, the romanticized notion of the farmer mindfully tending crops from seeds in the spring into a plentiful harvest in the fall still lingers in the corners of our memories.

The exhibited works show seemingly mundane views of agricultural landscapes. These symbolic images of the agricultural landscape of the past are ingrained in our collective unconscious. The memory of ‘the farm’ that we all drove by on the highway while growing up serves as a benchmark from which we might evaluate the present.