LIVES AND WORKS IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK

The subjects of Matvey Levenstein’s paintings are the subjects of autonomy. Atmospheric landscapes that suggest the possibility of the sublime, and domestic interiors with implied privacy and personhood, portray the conditions under which an object of autonomous painting might be possible. Invoking the intersection at which avant-garde cinema meets the tradition of European painting, Levenstein’s work explores and embodies the object-image relationship.

Enigmatic by way of their ambiguous temporality, Levenstein’s paintings share some of their distinctive formal qualities with the languorous, single-shot cinematic takes of Andrei Tarkovsky and might be compared to film stills sequestered from the linear sequentiality of an unknown narrative. His cinematic discourse collides with the tenets of Caspar David Friedrich. Characterized, but not overpowered, by nature’s brooding presence, Levenstein’s paintings play with trespassing the imposed borders between the human and natural world.

His are also works of discipline and considered self-restraint, rendered slowly using a variety of materials such as oil on wood, linen, or copper, as well as sumi ink on paper. The slowness and stillness contained and espoused by Levenstein’s paintings and drawings invite interior reflections both formal and metaphysical, further emphasized by the mirroring and distortion that recur as motifs throughout this body of work.

The scenes in Levenstein’s work are fictionalized as they are transformed. His intuitive sense of familiarity with his subjects allows Levenstein complete immersion in the material conditions of the painting wherein momentary impressions of rural and domestic life are balanced between representation and presentation. This practice is further exemplified by the artist’s revisiting of certain images in his work, neither attempting replicas nor effectively trying to avoid them from occurring. 

In 2023, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation named Levenstein a recipient of its prestigious 2022 Biennial Grant.

Levenstein was born in 1960 in Moscow, U.S.S.R. and lives and works in New York City and Orient, NY. He received his M.F.A. at Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, after attaining a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and the Moscow Architectural Institute, Moscow, U.S.S.R. He is included in the recent publications Landscape Painting Now by Todd Bradway and (Nothing but) Flowers published by Karma with essays by Hilton Als, Helen Molesworth, and David Rimanelli. Levenstein has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, honors, and residencies. These include the Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome, Rome (2003); the Penny McCall Foundation Award, New York (2002); the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Grant (1998); the Katherine J. Horwitch Grant, Jewish Foundation (1985-1987); and the Anna Louise Raymond Traveling Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (1983).