LITTLE COLLECTOR

Matthew Weinstein

Matthew Weinstein works extensively in 3D animation and he has assembled an animation production community that helps produce his twenty minute Animated Cabarets. All of Weinstein’s work begins with a script and song lyrics that he writes. He then creates fully realized computer animated characters and works with New York actors (Tony Award winners Natasha Richardson, John Benjamin Hickey, Dennis O'Hare, and Blair Brown, as well as Hope Davis) and musicians to bring his characters to life. Weinstein has built up an ever expanding index of characters that includes a singing Koi, a mechanical carp, two lovelorn Siamese Fighting Fish, golden dancing skeletons, three larcenous pigs, a golden chauffeur, a Chinese toddler, and an old man who lives inside a roast chicken. Sets, environments and plant forms constitute a virtual architecture surrounded by virtual nature that is populated by Weinstein’s original characters. Weinstein controls a computer animated theater company from his studio in Bushwick NY, which now features a playing area for motion capture technology, rehearsal and choreography. Weinstein also makes highly intricate paintings based on his animated films. Working with airbrush, paintbrush and precision stenciling, Weinstein’s paintings are richly colored depictions of the world of simulations and reflections of reality that he has created. The paintings are worlds unto themselves and exist independent of the films. They are abstractions of an abstracted reality where what is reflected and its reflection exist in different spaces; a space that Weinstein calls ‘Unrealism.’ Weinstein also works in sculpture; bronze casting, rapid prototyping and acrylic casting. He is represented by the Sonnabend Gallery in NY, and he was the first American Artist given a major exhibition at the new Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. He has also exhibited at the Kunsthalle in Vienna, The Matisse Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Denver Museum, Lisbon Biennale, Young Projects in LA, Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, Baldwin Gallery in Aspen, as well as many other international galleries. His ‘Bolero’ recently premiered; an animated film to accompany the live performance of Bolero by the Charlotte NC Symphony.