D3Projects at Bergamot Station, CA, is proud to present Dissociate, featuring the paintings and installations of Los Angeles based artist Vanessa Matthews. Highly prolific and with an incredibly honest and humorous tone, Matthews brings a new wind of creativity to the ever innovative Southern California art scene with a character-based aesthetic of graphic figures and hand-drawn typography.  

Initially, the artist built her body of work as a survival mechanism for the everyday routine of her life. Since tantrums are not an acceptable practice for adults, Matthews needed an outlet to express frustrations about what she perceived to be a ridiculous and unjust world. Anything readily available served as a surface for drawing, from scribblings on post-it notes and paint chips from the hardware store to torn out pages from Dwell and Architectural Digest. 

Characters were born out of this process of expressing the artist's pent up aggravation: parking tickets, road rage, traffic, inflation, ignorance, control freaks and the annoyance of being forced to comply with pointless rules sparked the lives of personalities who could speak her suppressed language. Through the rants of these angry little children, Matthews grants anyone trapped in the confines of adulthood permission to say all the things that propriety forbids.  

Dissociate features over 20 paintings on wood paper and an installation composed of over 140 handmade and painted, one-of-a-kind plush dolls, (developed with Nancy Mancini) which represent the characters that Vanessa Matthews created. Upon entering the space, the viewer is immersed in an incredible tridimensional world. The exhibition is an interactive experience as the viewer finds a voice through the likes of “Little Man”, “Sad Girl”, “Evil Cupcake” and “Bag Head”! 

Matthews encourages her audience to return to their native and untrained emotions through her painting and its translation into 3D plush forms. One can find their own lost perspective through confronting her subjects; although their hearts have been hardened, deep down they are all just looking for love. 

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The 140 handmade and one-of-a kind dolls composing the installation are for sale individually, as well as the paintings. For prices and information, please contact Anais Wade at anais@d3projects.net 

D3projects opened in June 2007 to bring an interactive and friendly art environment to the general public and art aficionados. Our aim is to share a passion for art and become an artistic forum based on a participative spirit. Any proceeds resulting from our activity are used for activities bringing together artists, general public, collectors and dealers, or donated to charities.