Exhibitions

Profile

Canadian artist Matthew Sweig is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design and is currently a practicing Landscape Architect in Toronto. He has endeavoured to paint the human environment as a parallel passion to that of design. He has exhibited his works in solo and group exhibitions across Canada as well as internationally since 2003.

Memory is the predominant theme in Sweig’s work. The subject matter of his work revolves around familiar artefacts and buildings either in a state of natural decay or intentional destruction. The theme of memory manifests itself in the history of inanimate objects that have unrecorded experiences. Human long-term memory is encoded semantically and is similarly evoked by capturing the object at the moment where the past has irrevocably been abandoned and an uncharted future is inevitable. Only in that brief moment prior to being successively and systematically replaced can the unique monumentality and beauty of the object be revealed. Freed from the banality of its surroundings, its greatness is now apparent.

Press

"He wields the paintbrush in such a way that... the act of painting, in other words, replays the act of demolition, serving almost as a memorial to it."
Gary Michael Dault for the Globe and Mail
February 12, 2005

"Sweig... has a few ideas with which to enrich and enliven what might otherwise become merely a virtuoso painting performance."
Gary Michael Dault for the Globe and Mail
August 19, 2006

"»Foundation« is equal parts demolition diary and ancestral architecture composited into a painted chronical of history in the making,"
Monika Burman for Mass Art Guide (MAG)
August 19, 2006

"This weekend's Artist Project Toronto could be where you take the plunge into collecting."
Andrew Sardone for Now
March 3, 2011