Matters of Materiality

27 March - 3 May 2025
  • JD Malat Gallery is pleased to present Matters of Materiality, a group exhibition that examines materiality as both substance and concept in contemporary abstraction. Texture has long been a means through which artists challenge perception, evoke memory and construct depth. In this exhibition, the surface is not a passive foundation but an active force; shaped, disrupted and redefined through process.
     

  • The physical and conceptual possibilities of surface

    Throughout the history of abstraction, artists have pushed beyond the visual, treating material as a language in itself. From the weight of impasto to the raw tactility of industrial substances, texture has been a site of tension: accumulating, resisting and shifting over time. Across varied approaches, the works in Matters of Materiality extends this dialogue with exhibiting work that stand in contrast to sharply defined grids. 

  • Material beyond its physicality

    Matters of Materiality invites us to consider material beyond its physicality. Rather than serving as a passive surface, material is worked, manipulated and transformed, holding traces of process, gesture and intent. The exhibition considers how texture shapes experience, how material defines space, and how a work’s weight and presence shift perception.
  • Richard Hudson, unravel
    Richard Hudson, Unravel, 2020, Polished Mirrored Steel, 67 x 250 x 133 cm

    Richard Hudson

    Richard Hudson (b. 1954, UK) is a prominent figure in contemporary British sculpture. His work is distinguished by sleek, organic forms that celebrate fluidity and sensuality. Working primarily with polished mirrored steel, bronze, and marble, Hudson creates sculptures ranging from intimate tabletop pieces to monumental public installations. The highly reflective surfaces of his mirrored steel works respond to their surroundings, transforming both the sculpture and its environment through ever-shifting reflections.
  • Andy Moses, Geomorphology 1705”
    Andy Moses, Geomorphology 1705”, 2018, Acrylic on Polycarbonate, mounted on vertically concave, parabolic wood panel, 151 x 208 x 15 cm, 59.5 x 82 x 5.75 inches

    Andy Moses

    Influenced by California culture Andy Moses (b. 1962, USA)  seeks to investigate colour and form through dynamic abstract works. Attending California Institute of Art in 1979 he was exposed to a plethora of creative methods including performance, film and painting. After graduating from CalArts in 1981, Andy moved to New York City where he worked as an assistant to artist Pat Steir. During this time Andy began developing an approach to process painting incorporating both abstract and representational elements. Andy's oeuvre is marked by his investigation into the physical properties of paint. Exploring the material’s chemical reactions, viscosity interference, and gravity dispersion Andy creates elaborate compositions reminiscent of nature and its forces. 
  • Masayoshi Nojo Mirage #97, 2024
    Masayoshi Nojo, Mirage #97, 2024, Cotton on panel, acrylic, silver foil, aluminium foil, 59 x 66 7/8 in, 150 x 170 cm

    Masayoshi Nojo

    Masayoshi Nojo (b. 1989, Japan) combines contemporary visual languages with Japanese aesthetics, exploring the themes of memory and the passage of time. Rooted in Japanese art history, Nojo’s use of silver – ethereal and shimmering – is particularly reminiscent of Ogata Kōrin’s celebrated work during the Edo Period in seventeenth-century Japan. Kōrin’s marbled silver rivers, often painted upon byōbu folding screens, were symbolic of time’s flow due to the changing colour of the metal through oxidisation. This depiction of time has since been adopted as a motif by artists worldwide such as Gustav Klimt and has become a cornerstone of a form of Japanese art known today as Rinpa (literally meaning “school of Kōrin”). With his most recent series, entitled Mirage, Nojo uses this sense of time to conjure a sense of deja-vu in the viewer – evoking a memory tantalisingly close, yet just out of reach.
     
  • Ed Moses (1926 - 2018) Pah, 2004
    Ed Moses, Pah, 2004, Acrylic on canvas, 65 3/4 x 54 1/8 in, 167.1 x 137.4 cm

    Ed Moses

    Ed Moses (b. 1926 - 2018, USA) was a central figure of Post-War West Coast movement, creating an eclectic body of work which engaged with the varying possibilities of painterly abstraction. Moses' work explores his fascination with the mutability of concepts, transitional spaces and processes. He challenged representational form and experimented with graphite, acrylic and oils by working with unconventional tools, such as mops, hoses and rubber scrapers. Innovative and experimental, Moses' work is instrumental in contemplating and pushing the possibilities of painterly abstraction.
  • Santiago Parra Untitled 2023
    Santiago Parra, Untitled, 2023, Acrylic on canvas, 77 1/2 x 77 1/2 in, 197 x 197 cm, Framed: 79 1/8 x 79 1/8 in, 201 x 201 cm

    Santiago Parra

    Santiago Parra (b.1986, Colombia) is known for his large, abstract and highly expressive monochromatic paintings. His canvases explore the expressive potential of pure abstraction, creating bold, sculptural brushstrokes that blend the dynamic energy of action painting with the thoughtful precision of automatism.
     
    He studied Literature at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, followed by an art education at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá and later at the Academy of Art University to study Fine Arts in San Francisco where he also learnt about Motion Pictures and Television. This venture proceeded his journey into the Art historical narratives of action painting and the surrealist movement, more notably the study of automatism which both inform his artistic practice.
  • Conrad Jon Godly painting of Swiss Alps
    Conrad Jon Godly, RENAISSANCE#38, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 51 1/8 x 59 in, 130 x 150 cm

    Conrad Jon Godly

    Born in 1962, in Davos, Switzerland, Conrad Jon Godly addresses the symbiotic relationship between human nature and the sublime; finding beauty in the awe and terror of nature. Godly’s paintings are a reminder of the futility of human existence, whose blunt expression of natural forms are an exercise in capturing the intricacies of the dramatic. Through richly textured acrylic compositions depicting Swiss Alps, he explores themes of resilience, transformation, and emotional recovery. A leading contemporary landscape painter with remarkable emotional depth and technical skill in blending abstraction and realism. 
  • Katrin Fridriks
    Katrin Fridriks, Queen of Stargates - Magical Powers, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 100 in, 381 x 254 cm

    Katrin Fridriks

    Katrin Fridriks (1974, Iceland) She is an abstract expressionist painter who examines questions about new technologies and polemical scientific research of the contemporary age. The artist explores forces that mould our society and raises controversial and political themes through her pieces. Her artistic process looks at stimulating our memory and consciousness. Her Icelandic roots have aroused a curiosity primarily in the four elements – air, fire, earth and water. These elements are powerfully displayed in her native country by volcanoes, geysers and glaciers, and these have shaped her way to comprehend nature and life.
     
    With her well-defined colour palette using silver, gold, copper and aluminium as backgrounds and shadows, Fridriks takes us deeper into her richly colorful world. Through the enlarged size and shape of her drippings, in the vein of pioneer Jackson Pollock yet with an enhanced precision and technique, the movement of her kinetic abstract paintings are heightened, giving a stronger rhythm and boldness. The essence of this visual language radiates from a self-taught urban iconoclast. Emphasized by a tireless work on matter and technique, her abstract expressionism combined with subtle Japanese calligraphic details embodies all the cultural wealth and open-mindedness from years spent in several countries. Fridriks pictorial substance envelops space, shape and time. Creating new perspectives, her work brings an innovative dimension to abstraction.
  • Casper Brindle
    Casper Brindle, Light Glyph 6, 2021, Plexiglas, pigmented acrylics, 74 x 44 in, 188 x 112 x 20,5 cm

    Casper Brindle

    Casper Brindle (b. 1968, Canada)  is renowned for his profound focus on optical effects and the austerity of its formal language. His work explores the expressive possibilities of colour, light, and form. Brindle started painting as a teen, deeply influenced by his upbringing on the beaches of Southern California, where he moved with his family at the age of six. His experiences surfing along the Los Angeles coastline and his formative years as an apprentice to pioneering Light and Space artist Eric Orr in his early twenties have profoundly shaped his practice. 
     
    As a second-generation Light and Space artist, Brindle's work features minimalist compositions enhanced by luminous, disembodied colors and machine-tooled surfaces. By intentionally incising horizontal lines across his panels the artist interrupts, and even disrupts, the originally pristine and pure expanses of color with edge-to-edge horizon lines, creating a dual sense of recession with mirrored upper and lower segments. Whether functioning as structural devices or guiding visual language, the notion of 'center' remains a constant theme throughout Brindle's works. These central, thicker, and shorter vertical elements emerge from the surface in a sculptural manner, while their radiance allows them to stand independently within visual perception. Thus, this striking contrast reaffirms the materiality of Brindle's creative method, presenting the vertical and horizontal elements in his work through a dualistic narrative framework.
     

  • Anne-Sophie Øgaard

    Anne-Sophie Øgaard work
    Anne-Sophie Øgaard, White Conjunction 0356, 2025, Sand, cement, plaster, paint on canvas, 63 x 70 7/8 in,160 x 180 cm

    Anne-Sophie Øgaard

    Anne-Sophie Øgaard (b. 1971, Norway) is a contemporary artist whose work bridges the boundaries between painting and sculpture. Her practice involves the creation of these intricate reliefs that challenge the binary of painting and sculpture,  exploring relationships between light, space, and unconventional materials such as sand, cement, and plaster.
     
    At the core of Øgaard’s work is an examination of construction and deconstruction that through installation transforms with the changing environmental conditions. Depending on the light source and viewing angle, each piece shifts in perception, inviting viewers to reimagine their understanding of art. Light becomes both a medium and a subject, creating compelling illusions of perspective and depth.  By blurring the lines between sculpture and painting, Øgaard creates immersive experiences that reveal the complex interplay of perception, space, and the nature of artistic expression.