Mat Chivers

@corinelemieuxx and I are super excited to invite you along to the opening of Phénomènes - our first exhibition together PV 6 to 8 pm, Thursday 28th May, Agrégat, Atrium of the University of Sherbrooke - Longueuil Campus 150 Pl. Charles-Le Moyne, Québec @centre_dartistes_agregat Work in progress image 1 @matchivers , image 2 @corinelemieuxx

I’m really pleased to have been invited by @mariannelwalker to include this recent drawing alongside a great line-up of artists in her curation of the Lutyens Room for the exhibition So Where Do We Go From Here? @artistsopenhouse @bellhousedulwich Becoming Field 2025 Pencil on paper 76 cm H x 56 cm W x 5 cm D PV Friday 8th May, 6-8pm 27 College Road, London, SE21 7BG Exhibition open weekends 11am-6pm, 9th-10th May and 16th-17th May Aflame: the democracy of drawing, curated by Marianne Walker Drawing remains one of the most democratic of all artistic mediums. It is accessible and affordable as well as being highly agentive, allowing the maker to express what captures their mind and eye through the metabolic processes of the heart and hand Drawing also allows for a wealth of technical expression from the studiousness of a representational pencil drawing to dream like and luminous manifestations of the imaginative realms. Let’s not forget the dynamism of the black inked mark, the subtle smokey tones of graphite, the joie de vivre of colour pencils Here, drawing is expressed across two and three dimensions as a manifestation of deep time, a sculptural tool and an act of enlivening, as well as an apotropaic prayer and an expression of sexy love So, in answer to the question “Where do we go from here?” Defiantly, we draw Artists: Aileen Harvey @aileenharvey Arianna Tinulla Milesi @ariannatinullamilesi Chantal Powell @chantalpowell Chloe Briggs @drawingisfree_org Hans de Wit @hans_de_wit courtesy of @johnmarchantgallery John Stark @johnstark_studio Kethevane Cellard @kethevanecellard Marianne Walker @mariannelwalker Mat Chivers @matchivers Min Angel @minangelartist Roland Hicks @rolandhicks Russell Herron @russell_herron_art Sarah Prail @sarahpraill Theo Michael @theo__michael Zoe Dorelli @zoedorelli

‘A thought crystallises the universe into geometric figures’ (excerpt from the diaries of Hilma Af Klint) The sculptures in this ongoing series are the outcome of an intuitive attempt to give visual and physical form to evolutionary process over time - to see this unseeable thing I’ve become aware of how we witness and experience evolution each time we manage to observe our thought forms as they emerge in our minds and transform in real time. Working with these ideas has led me to imagine forms that are slippery and undefinable. I feel the sculptures elude definition or categorisation. For me they feel like non-binary entities - they’re trans-species and trans-spatial, transgressing scale, oscillating between something micro and something macro Front and side views of the third of three smaller scale wall-mounted sculptures on view now in the exhibition Self Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London, until September 8th Ontogenesis 2025 Copper, rapid prototype 30 cm H x 29 cm W x 17 cm D Edition of 3 + 2 AP Photo credit @studio_adamson Thanks to the amazing team @3ddc_eu for their support in bringing these works into being #Sculpture #handmade #3d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #SelfSimilar #PaulSmithSpace #LondonArt #groupexhibition #matchivers

Front and side views of the second of three smaller scale wall-mounted sculptures on view now in the exhibition Self Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London, until September 8th Ontogenesis 2025 Copper, rapid prototype 30 cm H x 29 cm W x 17 cm D Edition of 3 + 2 AP Photo credit @studio_adamson Thanks to the amazing team @3ddc_eu for their support in bringing these works into being #Sculpture #handmade #3d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #SelfSimilar #PaulSmithSpace #LondonArt #groupexhibition #matchivers

Pleased to be able to share images of the first in an ongoing series of sculptures that have evolved alongside my recent drawing research. These smaller scale wall-mounted sculptures are a hybrid of making by hand and digital processes Three of them are on view now in the exhibition Self Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London until September 8th Thanks to the amazing team @3ddc_eu for their support in bringing these new works into reality Ontogenesis (front and side views) 2025 Copper, rapid prototype 30 cm H x 29 cm W x 20 cm D Edition of 3 + 2 AP Photo credit @studio_adamson #Sculpture #handmade #3d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #SelfSimilar #PaulSmithSpace #LondonArt #groupexhibition #MatChivers

I listen to music when I draw - heavy repetitive beats and swervy twisted bass cut through the monkey chatter in my mind and allow me to immerse in the process. These three drawings were made deep into a rich seam of dubby techno. My mind kept bringing me back to a book I’d read in my twenties by the Sufi author Inayat Khan called The Mysticism of Sound. After rooting it out again I read Vibrations as a rule have their length as well as breadth; they may last the least fraction of a moment or the greater part of the age of the universe. They make different forms, figures, and colours, as they shoot forth, one vibration creating another, and thus myriads arise out of one. In this way there are circles under circles and circles over circles, all of which form the universe. Every vibration after its manifestation becomes merged again in its original source On view now in the group exhibition Self-Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albermarle, Mayfair, London until Sunday 8th September 2025 2025 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W each photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #ConceptualDrawing #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #MatChivers

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about making these drawings is surrendering to a rule driven evolution and how in doing so I become part of a process. I like how this allows the idiosyncrasies in my mark-making to accumulate as nuances in the drawing - they seem to grow across the sheet like lichen across a rockface or the incremental creep of mycelial networks I use my fingertips to rub the loaded pigment into the paper - a process that feels almost sculptural in its physicality and reminds me of the years I’ve spent polishing stone. It’s only at the point when the pigments start to saturate the white paper and interact with each other that I begin to get a sense of how the finished drawing might look, but they keep surprising until the end. I love the feeling of making, not knowing what the end result will be - it feels like a microcosm of life On view now in the group exhibition Self-Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albermarle, Mayfair, London until Sunday 8th September 2025 2025 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #ConceptualDrawing #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #matchivers

Each of the drawings in this series of three is created with the same combinations of reds, greens and blues laid down in different orders on the sheet as generative systems Humans are said to have trichromatic vision because the three types of cone receptor cells in the retina of our eyes that process colour are sensitive to red, green and blue wavelengths of light. We can see a wide spectrum of colours as a result of the way our brains combine the signals from these three cone types I find it extraordinary that we only perceive a small fraction of the information in the world around us yet our experience of reality is so overwhelmingly rich On view now in the group exhibition Self-Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albermarle, Mayfair, London until Sunday 8th September 2025 2025 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #ConceptualDrawing #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #matchivers

The term Cymatics describes a body of occidental research initiated by the German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni in the 1700’s and continued most notably by the Swiss physician Hans Jenny in the 1960’s and 70’s. Cymatics explores how dynamic and ordered patterns are created when sound waves interact with matter This is the first in a series of three drawings that derive their structure from geometric forms known as Chladni figures that arise when specific tonal frequencies cause fine particles to arrange themselves in complex symmetrical forms on a metal plate. The patterns form relative to the density, size and shape of the base material and the specific sound frequency used Many traditional cultures emphasise that the fundamental nature of reality is sound. I’m fascinated by the fact that this profound understanding of the nature of reality was arrived at without the use of sophisticated scientific instruments. Western science is slowly catching up. Frontier hypotheses such as string theory suggest that the most minute elements of material reality - even smaller than quarks and leptons - could be one-dimensional strings vibrating at frequencies that define how we experience material as having different physical characteristics On view now in the group exhibition Self-Similar at Paul Smith Space, 9 Albermarle, Mayfair, London until Sunday 8th September 2025 Etiology 2025 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #ConceptualDrawing #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #matchivers

Really pleased to share some images of a commissioned sculpture that just reached completion. Massive thanks to all the team @pangolineditions for their masterful work in bringing it into being - a technical challenge that fuses old technologies with new: the handmade, digital scanning and 3D printing with lost wax casting. I’ve uploaded more documentation of Genius Loci on my website -matchivers.com or at link in bio    Genius Loci was developed for a site adjacent to an experimental vineyard established by a neuroscientist whose research focuses on Parkinson’s disease. The sculpture has evolved from a dialogue between us at the intersection of our interests and alludes to the complex web of affinity between the environment that it inhabits and our own internal landscapes Moving round the sculpture it appears elusive and ambiguous - simultaneously neurological and vegetal, animal, coralline and mycorrhizal - not one thing or the other, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It’s only when the viewer arrives a few degrees to centre on two sides of the sculpture that the symmetry in the work becomes apparent. The experience of symmetry allows us to see ourselves seeing - to experience our perceptual biology. We experience our minds trying to make sense of the uncanny conjunction Like a three-dimensional Rorschach inkblot, how the viewer attributes meaning to the psychedelic fecundity that results from the symmetrical conjunction in the sculpture - neural network or cosmic web, vertebrae or vulva - says as much about them as it does about the sculpture Genius Loci 2025 Patinated bronze, concrete base 2.6 m H x 1.9 m W x 1.9 m D  photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Sculpture #3D #Bronze #3DPrinting #Handmade #Digital #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #Pareidolia #NeuralArt #ArtCollectors #ArtCurators #MatChivers #GeniusLoci

I’ve been obsessed by symmetry for as long as I can remember and it’s always there in one way or another in my work. An increased sensitivity to symmetry gave our early ancestors an evolutionary advantage - allowing them to make out the faces of predators in the tangle and chaos of forest foliage. Now we’re the apex predator, symmetry hits differently. I’m drawn by a desire to feel my mind/brain working to find familiarity and meaning in the uncanny conjunction Etiology 2025 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ContemporaryArt #Symmetry #ConceptualDrawing #VisualPhilosophy #NeuralArt #ArtAndPhilosophy #ArtCurator #ArtCollection #CollectorArt #ArtForCollectors #ArtConsultant #MatChivers

I came across M-theory while working on these drawings and feel that maybe there’s some kind of parallels that can be drawn between it and the images I’m making M-theory is a theoretical framework in physics that unifies the five different versions of string theory into a single, more comprehensive model. M-theory offers a potential path toward a ‘theory of everything’, linking quantum mechanics with general relativity. It suggests that the fundamental building blocks of the universe aren’t zero-dimensional particles, but one-dimensional strings—and beyond that, higher-dimensional objects called branes Branes are multidimensional surfaces - like vast, flexible membranes - that exist within higher-dimensional space. Our entire universe could be one such brane, floating in an 11 dimensional space known as the ‘bulk’. They can move through this higher-dimensional space and when they collide or interact, they can trigger massive energetic events. Some physicists even speculate that the Big Bang could have been caused by such a collision. These interactions might leave behind subtle imprints in our universe, ripples in space-time or traces in the cosmic microwave background. Branes could also run parallel to ours, invisible yet influencing our reality through gravity or other forces leaking between dimensions I’m drawn to the idea that what we call form might just be the shadow of something vibrating far beyond our field of vision Etiology 2024 Dry pastel on Bockingford ivory 400 gsm paper 1.6 m H x 1.3 m W photo credit Steve Russell Studios & Tom Gallant #MTheory #Branes #DimensionalPhysics #Ontoglyph #MultidimensionalArt #StringTheory #Drawing #WorksOnPaper #2d #ConceptualArt