Matthew Picton

"Dresden - burnt"

"Dresden" - detail

"Dallas"

"Dallas" - detail

"Venice"

"Venice" - detail

I love maps. I love art. And so of course I love art maps and map art. Matthew Picton's work has involved maps for quite some time and his most recent pieces are beautiful sculptures that also incorporate text and sometimes imagery. These city maps portray some cultural or historical aspect of the particular place that will no doubt be familiar to most viewers. Dresden was notoriously fire-bombed in World War II resulting in horrific civilian casualties, and the artist recreates the scene meticulously scorching his model to reflect the scale of the damage. In Dallas John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The artist lines the route of the ill-fated motorcade through the city with images from that very day. His portrait of Venice uses pages from Thomas Mann's class novel "A Death in Venice" as well as the musical score for an opera based on the book by Benjamin Britten. Each piece is carefully layered with meaning, often referencing painstaking research. These details enrich the work without being required for immediate appreciation. There is something incredibly enticing about the three dimensionality of the maps that would no doubt make one want shift about over them, casting back and forth for different angles that subtly change one's perspective, and possibly to peer into the narrow roads and alleyways to get glimpses of fragmented words or images. It makes me glad that he provides at least one detail shot of each piece and usually more. There is plenty more of these maps on his website as well as many other bodies of work all worth looking at on his website: matthewpicton.com