Colin Matthes: Total Essential Knowledge

press release: Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) is pleased to announce that artist Colin Matthes, whose work is currently featured in the Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, will hold an Essential Knowledge Shared Visualizations session at ALL on December 6, 6-8pm. This event is free but limited spaces are available. Please email hello@artlitlab.org to reserve a space.

Total Essential Knowledge 2016:

Matthes invites communities to share their essential knowledge by having conversations around a table of drawing supplies and refreshments. One part workshop, one part conversation, as participants share stories and learn from each other, they gradually move into a workshop about creating individual drawings designed to communicate their knowledge. Matthes shares images of his Essential Knowledge drawings as well as images from architecture, the art world, science, and cartography that are designed to communicate specific information. Participants consider the role fiction, exaggeration, humor, and lies can play in image making and story telling.   

As participants make drawings that communicate our essential knowledge, Matthes stresses that no one is an expert in everything and everyone is an expert in something, and that drawing can be more than making something look like what it looks like. Each participant makes their own drawing; reproductions of these drawings are assembled into a small book that contributes to the goal of Total Essential Knowledge. Everyone involved receives a copy.