Jasmin Sian & Matthew Sontheimer

PRESS RELEASE

Jasmin Sian & Matthew Sontheimer

16 January – 27 February 2004

Opening reception: Friday, 16 January, 6 to 8 pm

Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition of new drawings by New York artist Jasmin Sian and Houston artist Matthew Sontheimer. Although the artists share the gallery space the exhibition is not collaborative. 

Jasmin Sian’s drawings are small in scale with intricate, obsessively detailed decorative patterns in ink, graphite and collage. The works are created on typically discarded surfaces such as brown deli paper from her corner bakery, tissue and magazine paper. Often the fragility of Sian’s materials threatens to undermine their very existence.

Sian‘s works turn ordinary, throw away items into things invested with time and love. The transformation of a negligible object into an object filled with pathos is a defining element of Sian’s work.

Matthew Sontheimer’s works are formed from two coded alphabets: bits and pieces of his father’s signature and the numbers assigned to letters on a telephone keypad. Using these coded languages Sontheimer writes various messages and exhibits visual representations of word play. 

Sontheimer questions the definition of language as a means to communicate.  His drawings are indecipherable as text. Unless given a key, appreciation of the work is purely visual. This struggle between the mind and the eye is a cornerstone of Sontheimer’s work.

There is a sincere humanity to both Jasmin Sian and Matthew Sontheimer’s drawings. Despite their visual and categorical differences – Sontheimer’s work is extremely minimal, conceptual, whereas Sian’s work is more decorative – both share the combination of painstaking, technical process and the quiet emotion that comes from bringing the personal into the public.