October 2021

Tugboat Gallery Proudly Presents “Moving Pictures” featuring Matthew Sontheimer.

“Moving Pictures” is an evolving site specific installation that uses hyperlinks that the artist has visited and bookmarked online since arriving in Lincoln a decade ago. The hyperlinks are printed on blue vinyl and applied to the wall; each of Tugboat’s 3 rooms will be treated differently.

Matthew Sontheimer – “The pieces in this show are all titled, Moving Pictures. They are all made on a computer and then printed onto commercial vinyl that is applied directly to the wall. The information composing the body of the work are all hyperlinks to websites I have visited and bookmarked online since arriving in Lincoln a decade ago.

The first time a version of this piece was exhibited was in 2015. This is the sixth gallery space I have shown a variation of this work. Because this piece is site specific, it is never formatted or scaled quite the same. Normally the work is a singular installation using the entire list of hyperlinks. This exhibition presents four independent works that each use the complete list of hyperlinks.

I see Traveling Without Moving as a collection, a library, a diary, a travel log, a research and teaching tool, a shopping list, and as a form of self-portrait. The individual links run the gamut in terms of subject. There are singular images of paintings, drawings, and prints. Photographs of works of sculpture, architecture, figures, and film clips. There are links to Museums spanning the globe, all manner of imagery from throughout art history, popular culture, books, music, essays, poems, links to online clothing stores, places to purchase artmaking materials, sites explaining how to work in various media, and favorite recordings of music.

Like much of my work, this piece involves text, the subject is to a great extent about how it is made, and there is an element of absurdity to the content. The piece can be read as mass as a block of coded information, or you can type a hyperlink into your cell phone and view the content in a singular manner—uncoded, intimate, and scaled and framed by the size of the screen on your phone.

One installation addresses all four corners of a room, hyperlinks presenting blocks of the text that are formatted to look mimic conventionally scaled pictures—8 ½ x 11 inches, 8 ½ x 14 inches, and 11 x 17 inches, and another presentation of the text that is installed on centered on a singular wall in the room. Many of the links in the list still function, some do not, and some may not work by the end of the exhibition. The various iterations of these formatted, printed and applied list of bookmarked links represent information gathered and shown in previous installations, and newer links that have been added over the years. The collating of information in this work keeps growing and is ongoing.

The final formatting, printing, and installing of the work would not be possible without the tireless work of the artist Jon Love. Jon has helped me digitally format the information composing this work, and physically install the work in each space it has been presented—from the outset. I cannot thank him enough for his great patience, ingenuity, and friendship.