Matt Copson

Kindly donated by the artist and C L E A R I N G, New York / Brussels / Los Angeles

Matt Copson (b. 1992, lives and works in London). 

The sheer power of laser light itself is part of what gives Copson’s laser animations such disturbing vitality. A surprisingly mechanical, analogue technology, the lasers used in Copson’s vector-based animations are created using powerful beams of light reflected by mirrors moving tens of thousands of times a second. It was when watching footage of one of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon concerts, that Copson noted how the stadium rock-scale laser animations that the band were using rendered the entire space around them into a void. The impossibly sharp light of lasers, which literally cut through the darkness like so many knives, are powerful enough to command our attention from miles away, and when the figure made of such sheer brightness addresses us, it is as though they communicate a message from a different plane. In modeling that contrast of light and dark to create archetypal animated animalia, Copson has identified the contemporary moment’s perceived darkness, and within it a groping search for ghosts, universal truths, faith and spirits. His animations allow us the brief sensation of meeting a form of liveliness that has a longer duration than brief human lives: the supernatural, the ancient spirits, the gods, cut through time and space to shatter the dark.

Recent solo and two-person exhibitions have taken place at High Art, Paris (2020), Reena Spaulings, New York (2019); Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar (2018); Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017) and Vilma Gold, London (2015). Copson has been featured in group exhibitions such as The Secret Life Of Lobsters, Clearing, Knokke (2020), Breathless – London Art Now at Ca’ Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice (2019); My Head is a Haunted House at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); Dracula’s Wedding at Rodeo, London (2019) and As Above, So Below at IMMA, Dublin (2017). He has also created a live performance at The Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2016) and an on-site installation for the Swiss Institute, New York (2019).