Matthew Olivier

Painting, major works, installation, and book. In the lineage of European figurative painting. Toronto.

Labor of Being SeenPainting · 001 · 2026

The Art of Reading Art — Matthew Olivier

The Art of Reading ArtBook

The Philadelphia Museum of Art Manuscript

Major WorksEssays · Manuscripts

InstallationCodex Algorithm ↗

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Labor of Being Seen

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Up until this point, every painting in my career has been an exploration of how to paint. I’d study Caravaggio to learn chiaroscuro, or Hopper to understand composition and isolation. I’d look to Hockney, and Rembrandt, and Van Gogh — the list goes on and on. The point is, painting up until this point was entirely focused on learning to paint, and regrettably, was hardly an exploration of my own ideas.

Of all the artists I studied, my favorite artist ever is Manet. For whatever reason, he was an artist I refused to study from a technical point of view. That is, until now. Labor of Being Seen is half study, half a first step into the world of actually using my voice to say what I want to say.

This painting is a first attempt to catalog the world we’ve come to know — one where every person is hyper-fixated on how they are viewed. I spend so much time watching people in public, and I’ve noticed how hyperaware and simultaneously unavailable and detached we’ve become as a society. We can sit at a table with friends and be alone. We play the game of walking the world carefree, so as to appear carefree — and it ends there. Everything is an appeal to how we are judged. If not by others, then by ourselves. Three women at a table, together and alone — watching, and being watched.

Dimensions36 × 48 in · 91.4 × 121.9 cm

AuthenticationSigned & dated on the back of the panel · COA letter

MaterialOil on wooden panel

FramingUnframed

Year2026

StatusAvailable · inquire

LocationStudio, Toronto

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