Andy Mattern
Standard Size

June 15 - September 11, 2016

Please join us at our new location: 190 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002.

By recovering his own reality, Andy Mattern presents an alternative norm in his new series of photographs: Standard Size. A standard is defined as something considered by authority or by general consent to be a basis of comparison, an approved model. As humans, there is a standard for just about everything and everyone. It’s found everywhere, even on photography paper boxes. When Andy Mattern would purchase paper he was hyperaware of the images and text he was involuntarily being sold on the box cover depicting the idealized family portrait or a picturesque landscape. In an effort to rid himself of the vexation caused by these images, he began to collage over all of his photography boxes from Kodak to Ilford to create the photographs seen in this collection.

Andy Mattern creates the unexpected, rephotographing each collaged box as a new transformed object while successfully expanding on the convention of photography and its methodologies. Individually bordered in a light grey to highlight the edges and age of each box, these images are balanced with subtle textures and bold colors. Each box is printed and framed at actual size to ensure each piece is represented as close to how they really exist, in their own Standard Size.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1979, Andy Mattern is a contemporary photographer who uses everyday objects as sources of inspiration for his work. Mattern attended the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art in 2002 and later went on to continue his education at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis where he received a Masters in Fine Arts in Photography in 2012. Andy’s work has been showcased nationally in several exhibitions and most recently has been featured at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN, Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, LA, Texas Women’s University, Denton, TX, the Art Institutes International Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, the DeVos Art Museum, Marquette, MI, and the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM. In 2015 he was awarded Juror’s Pick in the Daylight Photo Awards and more recently was honored with both an Art365 Grant and Concept/Focus Grant by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. He is represented in the permanent collections of the BMO Harris Bank, Minneapolis, MN, Photographic Center North West, Seattle, WA, and Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN. Andy continues his career teaching as the Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Oklahoma State University, where he has recently instituted the first photography program housed in the Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History.