Bright Sun Sours is a collection of eight photographs, printed on an adhesive and mounted directly to the wall. The individual pictures are like chapters in a book of essays, connected by their visual style and recurring themes of cinematic romanticism. The medium’s inherent flexibility, along with the incorporation of techniques such as appropriation, digital montage, studio models, and AI tools, allows the artist to add to and manipulate photographs made in the studio or field. The result is less a coherent narrative than a series of glimpses into possible storylines, tempered by the realities of our time, and an underlying mood of concern.
A man stands under a tree wearing a thong, a gas can in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Perhaps he’s consolidating his resources, dressed for life under a blistering sun and a warming climate. The image seems absurd at first glance, yet the reality it posits is a future that’s one-part possible reality, the other a ridiculous post-apocalyptic genre piece.
A young woman, wearing a sailor costume, checks her phone before stepping into her car, while her mother loads something into the trunk. Her outfit matches the one worn by Dasha Nekrasova, who first became internet famous for fending off a right-wing commentator by weaponizing the bored affectation of an acerbic teenager. Later, during the pandemic, she became a leading voice in the downtown right-leaning Manhattan cultural scene made famous for its roster of edge-lord artists and writers.
Black Moon, Louis Malle’s mostly tedious 1975 fantasy horror film, contains a scene where the protagonist, a young woman frayed from a series of violent and dialectical conflicts, encounters a Unicorn. The brief conversation that ensues in probably the sanest thing that happens in the movie, and it wraps up with the Unicorn wandering off and proclaiming “I won’t be back for another hundred and fifty-four years.” The rest of us are stuck at the chateau for the remainder of the movie.
Death Valley is famous for its cracked, parched look—a thick crust of salt baking in the sun, like snow that never melts. But during a recent storm, unprecedented rains flooded the basin with a few inches of water, turning the scorched desert into a placid lake. At sunrise and sunset, the water is still enough to reflect the mountains that surround the valley, mirroring the colors of the desert sky.
The rest of it can be summed up quickly: An inverted truck, a tractor without its trailer, looms at the crest of a hill. The image is intended to feel like an 80s movie poster—a possessed piece of machinery that stalks a quiet neighborhood. Crumbling ruins, Greek columns, a tiny model placed next to the real thing. A figure in silhouette stands on a balcony, shielding their eyes from the ozone haze, like an insect fixed in amber. The balcony juts from the upper floor of a skyscraper, the tower modeled on the angular modernism of late 20th century science fiction. Butterflies clustered together for warmth, their wings opening in the dappled, late afternoon sunlight of a California winter.
Matthew Porter (b. 1975, State College, PA) received his BA from Bard College and his MFA from Bard-ICP. Recent solo exhibitions include This Is How It Ends, Danzinger Gallery, New York, NY; The Sheen, The Shine, Gallery Xippas, Geneva, Switzerland, and Skyline Vista, M+B, Los Angeles, CA. His work has also been included in the thematic exhibitions Autophoto at the Fondation Cartier, Paris; Matter of Memory: Photography as Object in the Digital Age at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Polaroids: The Disappearing at Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, After Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Perspectives at the International Center of Photography Museum, New York. Porter's curatorial projects include Soft Target, organized with Phil Chang at M+B, Los Angeles; Seven Summits at Mount Tremper Arts, New York; and The Crystal Chain at Invisible Exports, New York. He is the co-editor of Blind Spot magazine Issue 45 and his writings and interviews have been featured in Triple Canopy, Blind Spot, Artforum and Canteen. The artist’s work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; and the UBS Art Collection, New York, among others. Matthew Porter lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
