Having been raised in a suburban neighborhood outside of Kansas City, Bollinger draws on familial history to help create allegories related to what’s happening around the country now. Often focusing on domestic environments or individuals at work, his figures become metaphors for larger swaths of American society. While trained as a painter, Bollinger’s studio practice is an interdisciplinary tour de force where narratives and characters seamlessly shift between media. Yet, Bollinger doesn’t try to make his work political rather, taking stance more attune to an anthropologist whose documenting with empathy. It’s easy to understand how the subjects got to this lonely place, especially with a global pandemic and a political system that operates in a zero-sum manner.
People go about their daily lives-filling a lawnmower with gas, smoking a cigarette, looking at a convenience store window- but with a palpable fatigue that exists when one is trying to hold onto a world slipping away. The artwork that comprises Double Shift spans the past 5 years and share a collective malaise that can be felt throughout each object in the exhibition. It’s these individuals that often become the subjects of Matt Bollinger’s drawings, paintings, and animations.
As we approach the midterm elections in 2022, we’re seeing an even more divided America one in which the working-class and middle-class find it more difficult to make ends meet amongst high inflation and while on the brink of a recession. Whether you agree with the policies or not, it’s undeniable that all Americans have witnessed the effects on Main Streets across the US. After all, it was Gingrich who introduced the divisive rhetoric, vicious tactics, and nationalistic platforms that have come to shape the American sociopolitical environment for the last 30 years. One could argue that Newt Gingrich, more than any other contemporary politician, has shifted the dynamics of US politics in the 21st-century.
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