Trevor Shimizu

Trevor Shimizu's first show at Matthew Brown features new paintings made within the last year, including portraits, landscapes, and mixed-media works created across seasons. About Trevor Shimizu's first show at Matthew Brown is a suite of TKNUMBEROFPAINTINGS new paintings, all made within the last year. Most are portraits or landscapes. One is an iPhone, silently playing The Dare's 2022 hit "Girls." The landscapes follow the cycle of the seasons, and the New York-based artist's meanderings through them. One small canvas was set on an easel outdoors and left facing a dogwood and a sugar maple tree through a fall and a winter. It was painted with oil, leaves and sticks. Much of it was completed by the weather before the artist made a single gesture. Another portrays a panorama of the Hudson made from leftover paint from last show's palette. Others are seascapes frothing with layers and the blurred outlines of harbor seals. Across all, Shimizu's marks run confident and loose. They don't seek cover for every error or blankness. The scale of Shimizu's large landscapes evokes a field of vision. They imitate what you would see seated on a small square of wood, looking at a bush or out at the whole of the ocean. In other words, they are near-sighted, yet they feel whole. Relative to the vast places they describe, they are diminutive and myopic. The portraits were made alongside the landscapes. They arrive from the same months, the same day-to-day passages. The titles allude to the situations. The situations are not explained. Together, these transmissions from the thick of life depict an artist approaching the apogee, armed with the ease of an idiosyncratic hand. The kind earned from living past when purity, performance and gimmick give out. Because soon, inevitably, the endings will outnumber the starts. For now, though, the artist seems happy enough to laugh at his own youthful tears (see: self-portrait). To draw close to his children. To stare at the trees as they too change. Trevor Shimizu (b. 1978, California) lives and works in New York. Read more Toggle Painting