Matthew Rosenbeck is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in New Orleans since 1995. Practicing as a musician, furniture maker and contemporary artist, Rosenbeck brings a unique and functional lens to spiritual art and assemblage. Blending personal and collective mythologies, he gathers and reworks stories via the use of tactile objects and salvaged, found materials. Rosenbeck’s studio space on St. Claude Ave also functions as a venue for conversation and other performing artists.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kristina Kay Robinson: Given you’ve spent so much time as a musician, how does that work with the fact that you have a visual practice? Are your processes linked or are they separate?
I think of them as pretty separate. Unless we’re talking about music videos, then I could see them overlap. I like music pretty traditional, although some of my projects when I was younger were abstract.
KKR: Do you have different dispositions in different mediums/genres?
Music is a lot more interactive, a lot more social, whereas making art is more solitary. I love music. I feel like I am good at art, but music, I enjoy. I’m thinking right now about scaling up, working larger. Not being limited to what I can fit out the door.
KKR: How the actual physical space influences practice really fascinates me.
Its been a gradual process building the space out, gathering material, working with what I have access to. I’m very material driven.
KKR: This space is a piece itself. Its definitely not a cold space.
This piece is one of my most recent. My mom had this trunk growing up and it was always locked, no one had the key. She had it in a few storage spaces where it got flood damaged. After she passed I was going through her stuff, and pulled this trunk out and it just fell apart. So I just thought about each piece (fabric) having its own story. The material was very interesting, I had to treat each piece with polyurethane. The piece had been on my mind for a minute, but it took awhile for it to manifest.
KR: It doesn’t look still, even though it is. It looks like it moves, which is cool.
I do draw a lot of inspiration from material. Sometimes it is where it came from. Sometimes not. Right now I have this giant piece of red stained fabric that I’m really into. It doesn’t have a particularly significant meaning.
This is an older piece, about 2017, called they shot malcolm. This was coming out of residency at Joan Mitchell Center. I had access to a large printer there. Its a combination of collage and paint.
KKR: You work in a lot of different mediums, collage, paint, sculpture, drawing…
These figure drawings were actually ones my mom had done. I had a stack of a couple hundred of them that were water damaged. So instead of throwing them away, I cut them up into collage pieces. I have several more.
This wood sculpture is about 2009. I was going out by the train tracks collecting driftwood. This is also from that wood, The Hieorphant. Dry palm, tobacco, driftwood.
KKR: When you make work, do you create with an audience or viewer in mind?
Nah. Anytime I have tried to make something with the intention to sell, it never works out. If I am satisfied with it, I feel like its cool.
KKR: So its more an expressive process.
The more I make work, the more I create my own market. When you see the work separately, you may not associate it with the same artist, but when you see them together, you see the process.
This piece was made from twenty-eight water damaged landscape paintings.
KKR: Have you always been interested in salvaged, recycled material?
I never thought about it intentionally, but yes I find it more exciting than buying material.
KKR: I see wood is a constant in your work. I was reading this article about a mathematician turned hermit who wrote a lot about the sentience of wood.
There’s definitely an energy to wood, then with the salvaged and reclaimed wood, I think about the different lives it had.
KKR: I like the way time is engaged in your work. Its new and old. There’s time travel. There’s a heavy emotionality but also playfulness and whimsy. The way you gather stories.
I’m always trying to find balance. I like the textual but not overly busy. I do furniture too. I built out the space over time. I’m slowly working on the outside. I have some ideas.
