Curated by Jason Tomme & Ana Wolovick

Curated by Jason Tomme & Ana Wolovick

Press Release:

Black Ball Projects is pleased to present Lottery, featuring a collection of new collages and sculptures by San Francisco-based artist Matt Borruso.

Lottery further develops Borruso’s long engagement with collage and the element of chance. This new work draws on formal mid-century modern design, pre-CGI special effects imagery, color theory, photographs of sculptural objects, and ruined black light posters. There is a focus on what we do and do not see, such as the unreal that has become real, or three dimensions reduced to two. Heads are obscured. Eyes are blacked out. Bars of flat color conceal. Rules are employed. And despite all of the best intentions, logic and symmetry are never assured.

Two small sculptures in the show have been made from molds of a hollow latex mask, refined and cast in solid concrete. Each is a replica, but each is different, disguised by a prosthetic nose that itself has been re-cast from yet another disguise. Every mask reproduction or paper layer can hide an infinite number of potential personas; every combination proposes an infinite number of outcomes.

 Matt Borruso lives and works in San Francisco, and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Yale University (MFA). He has had solo exhibitions at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, 2nd Floor Projects, and Mina Dresden in San Francisco; and has participated in group exhibitions at Anna Kustera, New York; Et.al.etc., San Francisco; Sister, Los Angeles; Derek Eller, New York; and Exile Projects, Berlin. In 2014 his work was included in Allegorical Procedures: Bay Area Collage, 1950-Present at San Francisco State University. He publishes under his imprint Visible Publications, and his early Xeroxed punk flyers have appeared in the books Fucked Up and Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement and Punk Is Dead: Punk Is Everything.