"A Break In The Clouds", solo exhibition at Red Head Gallery

Opening at Red Head Gallery on September 22nd, ending October 16th.

401 Richmond Street West, Toronto.

Reception: Saturday September 25, 2 - 5 PM

(outdoors in front of the building due to gathering restrictions)

“Mathew Borrett builds a playful series of loosely themed worlds. Inspiration for these places range from a summer trip to Nova Scotia, playing Minecraft with his nephew, and ideas from 80's science fiction novels. The work continues Borrett's exploration of vast landscapes crafted with densely intricate detail and sparse fragments of narrative.”



“Ynys Sfferau”, 2021

“Ynys Sfferau”, 2021

Out of the Clouds

It’s been awhile since I posted anything new in here. Here’s a new render I made - still pretty much playing with the same elements I’ve been using for a few years, mixed into something new like a trusty Lego set. I could generate endless variations, though perhaps it’s time to add some new pieces to the kit. Rendered in Clarisse IFX with some post in photoshop.

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Recent-ish Renders - Porting Hypernurnia into Clarisse IFX

Sometimes a piece of software comes along which literally speeds up your workflow by a factor of ten or more. So it is with Clarisse IFX, a layout and rendering tool that excels at assembling large complex scenes. I had been doing everything in Modo, which is a great asset creation tool, and while it can handle complex scenes, Clarisse is built specifically for that task. So it was a no-brainer to take my whole modo set-up for the Hypernurnia series into Clarisse. The following images are some early results.

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"Hiding Places" - New work at Red Head Gallery, Oct 31 to Nov 24

Somehow, after an instense year when lots of “life happened” + juggling other commitments, I’ve pulled together a new exhibition. I’m putting it on the wall today, though there may be a couple of straggler pieces going up before the opening reception on Nov 8th, (6-9pm). Such is life. The work picks up where I left off a dozen years ago with my room drawings.
More info here. Facebook event page here.

“Lost in Bed #1”, pigment print, 43” x48”, 2018

“Lost in Bed #1”, pigment print, 43” x48”, 2018

“Somnambulant Living Room”, pigment print, 23” x 30”, 2018

“Somnambulant Living Room”, pigment print, 23” x 30”, 2018

Biidaaban

Very honoured to have worked on the environments for this project by film maker Lisa Jackson, with Jam3 and the Nation Film Board of Canada. It will be shown for the first time next week at the Tribeca Film Festival Immersive program in New York. The world we created is partly an adaptation of my Hypnagogic City piece, set in a future Nathan Phillips Square.

Article on the CBC here, and Engadget

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Detail from Hypnagogic City #2

This is from the second iteration of Hypnagogic City, which will be on the gallery wall just in time for the opening reception on March 9th. It's been a big technical challenge getting these images rendered on time! 

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"Hypnagogic City", New Exhibition at Red Head Gallery this March

My new exhibition this March at Red Head Gallery in Toronto features a follow-up piece to "Future Toronto?"  The show runs from March 1st to the 25th.

"Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.
- Wikipedia

Starting with a publicly available digital model of Toronto, Mathew Borrett has crafted a haunting tableau of the city's civic center as might exist in a parallel universe. We glimpse a present day through a new lense: one constructed of an accretion of imagined structures and the decay of old ones. The prevalent theme is the relationship between the built environment and nature. Taking a maximalist approach, the viewer is presented with a hyper-detailed scene that invites repeated exploration."

The image below is a detail from "Hypnagogic CIty".