All the paintings are interiors, little realist one-act plays set in the familiar world of offices, schools, and homes. Bourbon sets aside the operatic tradition of figurative painting, instead of romance or battle, Bourbon’s people read, sew, or confer quietly; undramatic actions that make the fabric of life in our safe middle-class society...
They’re the kind of pictures you see in corporate annual reports or school course catalogs, given a boost: the erasure of the specifics of individual identities forces us to focus attention on the nuances of these undramatic situations, and allows us to more easily enter the blank spaces Bourbon leaves in his ambiguous stories. It’s the life most of us lead, dull when compared to the turmoil and drama of traditional narrative art, yet through its truthiness, surprisingly affecting.
-Bill Davenport, Editor of Glasstire
Matthew Bourbon's paintings...seem like stills from an animation a Kubrick on another planet might have made."
-Virginia Rutledge, Curator, Texas Biennial
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2019 Mind Gathering, Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX (Fall)
Waiting for Now, Old Jail Art Center Museum, Albany, TX
2018 Matthew Bourbon, University of Texas Arlington, Arlington, TX
Tribalism Begins at Home: New Paintings from Matthew Bourbon, Rudolph Blume Gallery, Houston, TX
2017 Sense and Reason: New Paintings from Matthew Bourbon, UNT on the Square, University of North Texas, Denton,TX
2016 If, Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX
2015 Matthew Bourbon-Paintings, Murchison Performing Art Center, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
PostScript, Patterson-Appelton Center for the Visual Arts, Denton, TX
Though It's Been Said, RE Gallery, Dallas, TX
2014 Arch Deceivers, Avis Frank Gallery, Houston, TX
2012 Tender Pioneers, Darke Gallery, Houston, TX
2010 Our Splendid Defeat, Rudolph Blume Gallery, Houston, TX
2008 Parts and Players, H. Paxton Moore Fine Art Gallery, El Centro College, Dallas, TX
2006 Crass, Cruel and Uncouth-New Paintings, Conduit Gallery, Dallas TX
The Artist's Eye, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX
2005 True Fictions, Studio 107, Austin, TX
Group
2018 C’est de la Peinture!, Bankley Studios and Gallery, Levenshulme, Manchester, England
Time, Space, and Process, Bethel University, St. Paul, MN
Prohibitor, Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX
OSO Bay Biennial XX, Texas A & M Corpus Christi, TX
2016 SlideLuck 2016, Strauss Square at the AT&T Performing Arts Center, Dallas, TX
Matthew Bourbon, Dallas Art Fair-Kirk Hopper Fine Arts, Dallas, TX
More Texas in Denmark, Grenen Kunstmuseum/Galleri Rasmus, Skagen, Denmark
Texas in Denmark--Group Show, Art Herning Art Fair 2016, Herning, Denmark
2015 Rodeo, Gallerie Rasmus, Odense, Denmark
Texas, Somewhere in Denmark, Galleri Rodhus Gaarden, Denmark
RE Road Show, Vignettes at Magnolia, Auburn, AL
Luck of The Draw, Diverse Works, Houston, TX
2014 Valentine Show, Kenise Barnes Fine Arts, Larchmont, NY
2013 Object Object!: A Selection of Smaller Work, Helmuth Projects, San Diego, CA
Texas Biennial, Blue Star, San Antonio, TX Curated by Virginia Rutledge, Christina Rees, Bill Arning etc.
The Song Sings Itself-Matthew Bourbon, Robert Otto Epstein & John Franklin,
Kenise Barnes Fine Arts, Larchmont, NY
2012 American Paintings, Darke Gallery, Houston, TX
New American Paintings-Exhibition in Print, Issue No. 102, Western Edition Juror Bill Arning, Director of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Big and Bright, Southwestern College Art Gallery, Chula Vista, CA
2011 Texas Biennial, 816 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX Curated by Virginia Rutledge
2010 Home Is Where The Art Is, Rudolph Blume Gallery, Houston, TX
New American Painting- Issue No. 90, Western Edition Juror Toby Kamps, Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Musuem Houston
(now the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Menil Collection, Houston)
Hunting Prize Gala Exhibition, F.C. Campus, Houston, TX
2009 Death of a Propane Salsesman: Anxiety and the Texas Artist, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Fort Worth, TX Curated by Christina Rees
2008 On Game, Univeristy of Dallas, Richardson, TX Curated by John Pomara