Drawn to the city: Rochester artist to talk about his work at Riverland
Published 11:26 am Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Sam Reimer, right, shows artwork to her daughter, 2-year-old Emma Belden-Reimers, at the James Wegner Art Gallery inside Riverland Community College Monday. Artist Matthew Winkler will talk about his work in the Riverland exhibit, “Site Drawings,” at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday. — Trey Mewes/trey.mewes@austindailyherald.com
Who knew urban planning could be so fascinating? Matthew Winkler did.
The recent Minnesota transplant’s drawings and collages are gathered into “Site Drawings,” the latest exhibit at the James Wegner Art Gallery inside Riverland Community College.
Same Reimers, right, looks at some of Matthew Winkler’s art with her children, 4-year-old Mason and 2-year-old Emma, at the “Site Drawings” exhibit inside Riverland Community College’s James Wegner Art Gallery.
Winkler will be at the gallery, next to the Frank W. Bridges Theatre at Riverland’s Austin east campus, to give an artist’s talk at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, to mark the exhibit’s closing.
“His work is less of a plan and more of an imaginative response to urban space,” said Tim Jones, Riverland art instructor and gallery curator. “There’s a lot of just really skillful ability to observe and work creatively with his observation.”
Winkler teaches at Winona State University and St. Mary’s University, and he obtained his master’s degree from California State University-Long Beach in 2011. Before moving to Rochester, Minn., he lived in southern California and New Jersey, and the urban settings he lived in largely influenced his work.
“He’s spent quite a bit of time in crowded, urban living situations,” Jones said. “Because the city is so vast and labyrinthine, it’s not an easy effort to be able to represent it and capture that quality, but the density of his photo collages, and the material he’s culled from his observations … the whole project seems to be an open exploration of how we can represent modern urban living.”
Winkler works in drawings, but also creates giant collages based on photos he has seen or taken and plays with the images they depict to create something entirely different from the original image.
