Mat Tomezsko
Untitled from There is No (series) #67
Acrylic on paper
18-1/2" x 15-1/2"
unframed

About the Work
There Is No was a part of the InLiquid Juvenile In Justice exhibition November 8 - December 12, 2013.

In July 2012, I made a series of 94 paintings called There Is No, while teaching workshops at the Covenant House, a shelter facility for homeless youth located in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood. The young people I worked with had experienced devastation on a level unimaginable to most people. All of them had lost friends and relatives; some had no living family members left. Informed by their input and my own experience of my friend's death, I developed imagery and vocabulary that approximates the experience of the tumultuous and frustrated emotional reactions that come from violent loss.

Bio

Mat Tomezsko is an artist from Philadelphia creating abstract paintings, public art installations, and community art projects based around participation and everyday visual language. His approach to composition is informed by mid-century formalism and conceptualism. His work was recognized by the 2017 Americans for the Arts Public Art Network Year in Review for outstanding public art. Tomezsko's artwork has been exhibited at numerous art spaces regionally and nationally, including the Crane Arts, Woodmere Art Museum, the Center For Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), and Wexler Gallery in Philadelphia; Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago, IL; the Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, DE; and Thomas Hunter Projects in New York, NY. He has created several notable public art projects including 14 Movements: A Symphony in Color and Words, a mile-long temporary mural installed in downtown Philadelphia during the 2016 Democratic National Convention; Look Long and Look Good, a series of 30 paintings currently installed along Main Street in Manayunk; and Flowering Axes, a mural in the 5th Street Vehicular Tunnel underneath the Ben Franklin Bridge.

His work is in the collection of The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania, Fox School of Business at Temple University, Capital One in Wilmington, DE; and various private collections.

www.mattomezsko.com, www.94thereisno.blogspot.com