Artist Statement

Artist Statement- Matt Zigler

What happens when you learn a new word or see a new face, and from that point on you keep seeing it everywhere? It seems like it had never existed before, but you know that it was there all along and you have simply made a place for it in your mind. The same thing happened to me on the streets of Philadelphia. I knew there were pigeons around me, but they did not stick in my brain. I walked past them and they were gone. And then I saw the beige pigeon.

Why that particular bird flipped a switch in my mind I have no idea. Why does anything attract our interest and hold on for great lengths of time? Ever since that day I have watched the pigeons of Philadelphia pecking, flapping, preening and courting beneath the feet and above the heads of people on the street who are unaware of the lives being lived around them. How have we become so desensitized to the natural world? How have we come to compartmentalize the environment into organisms worth paying attention to and organisms beneath our contempt?

Through my paintings and installations I provide "beige pigeon moments" for my viewers. Art can do this in ways that science, politics, activism and other languages of the environment do not. The natural world is full of little dramas, narratives and moments of profound value. By making art about these moments, I create an opportunity to see a larger world where the connections between ourselves, other organisms, and the spaces we inhabit might just stick in our brains, so that we can see them everywhere.