Matthew Leslie Visual Art

The works on this page are from an ongoing series combining patterns of concrete vista blocks developed for midcentury architecture with images of trepanned skulls discovered in the remains of ancient civilizations. The skulls are painted in acrylic on black velvet fabric hand embossed directly from concrete vista blocks. They are un-stretched, and conceived to hang unframed like flags.

I am interested in cultural appropriation from the perspective of the colonizer, in this case presenting images originating from archaeological excavations as individual portraits against background patterns characteristic of older, sometimes decrepit models of urban and suburban architecture from a period of rapid population growth, later fetishized by aficionados of this style.

The use of black velvet is meant to be reminiscent of a romanticized theme park or Hollywood film version of a Jolly Roger pirate flag while also recalling the tradition of kitsch velvet paintings of entertainment figures, clowns, and other subjects.

Both the embossed patterns and the painted figures vary in appearance from different angles, making the flags somewhat problematic to represent in still images. Dimensions vary from piece to piece, but nearly all on this page are between 36” and 38” in height and about 44” wide. The exceptions are the one with two skulls, which is 22.5″ high and 44″ in length and the last two on the page which are each about 40″ x 64.”