Honor Fraser is pleased to present Loading …, the premier solo exhibition of Los Angeles native Matt DiGiacomo. DiGiacomo, whose tongue-in-cheek illustrations have garnered him wide acclaim throughout the fashion industry, steps into the art arena with a recognizable buck towards tradition. The resulting exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and limited-edition Sex Records merchandise taunts the roles and conventions of the commercial art market, while meditating on the compounding semiotics of Los Angeles — beauty, rebellion, and capital. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 9 from 6pm to 9pm.
Throughout the gallery, DiGiacomo’s illustrations take center stage, covering canvases, sculptures, exhibition furniture, and a range of customized merchandise — iPhone cases, Apple laptops and Airpods. His expressive and improvisational style is more than mere ornament, however. DiGiacomo fills his canvases with roaming voices and disembodied utterances, calling out to be heard amongst the cacophony of modern life. Forged in the concrete crucible of skate parks, boardwalks, and graffiti-lined thoroughfare, DiGiacomo’s artworks are mischievous emblems that hang ten on the milieu of California dreaming — leaving viewers to question if we’re glowing in their delightful warmth or burnt by their sardonic charm.
DiGiacomo’s playful spirit is central to the artist’s breakout solo exhibition in Los Angeles, and he spares no expense to provoke the conceptual philosophies and formal frameworks of the commercial art market in which he now enters into. In turn, visitors to the gallery are confronted with a rebellious installation of the artist’s expansive body of work that fluctuates between cool aesthetic objectivity and hyper-stylized branding. In Honor Fraser’s south galleries, groupings of DiGiacomo’s feisty paintings invoke the swish and swagger of a generation of street artists who have enchanted the commercial artworld since the late 20th century. Like a funhouse mirror, this presentation of artworks is poignantly refracted in the gallery’s north project space, where DiGiacomo has assembled his own renegade Apple Store. Playing up, and against, the sterility of “the white cube,” DiGiacomo’s pop-up is full of exclusive merchandise for sale. Tech products, peppered with DiGiacomo’s signature illustrations, are found meticulously placed on top of equally adorned wooden tables. Together, the two seemingly paradoxical exhibition spaces reveal the rarely acknowledged practices that form the bedrock of the arts economy. In turn, Loading…, like the title suggests, is an exhibition in-between states — one that teases what’s yet to come while cultivating divergent avenues of accessibility to DiGiacomo’s larger creative universe.
Matt DiGiacomo (b. Los Angeles) also known by his moniker Matty Boy, is a LA-based artist and has served as the Creative Director of Chrome Hearts, since 2018.