DECONSTRUCTION : RECONSTRUCTION

Matthias Zinn claims that painting can only succeed if our present world is digested through the medium itself. Zinn's strategic starting point is rooted in his conviction that form can only arise from the complex interactions between painter and painting: ...It is always painting that gives form to things, letting them emerge from the work process itself. Whereby the artist incomparably succeeds in actually condensing things down to icons. (Konrad Bitterli, director of Kunstmuseum Winterthur and curator of the exhibition Ambigu, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2010). And according to Matthias Zinn's own statement: In order to connect the inner with the outer reality, I have to create a third reality – his paintings, works on paper and his sculptures invent their own world of form and space, which in turn enables us to perceive the world we are living in.

Zinn's sculptural projects take these ideas to a new level. Here he unfolds his visual vocabulary into the space we are in, confronting or connecting his inner vision with the reality of the viewer. He continues to develop a visual language that reaches its limits in painting. His sculptures were initially created from leftovers in the studio, in dialogue with his two-dimensional works. Increasingly, however, they occupy a territory of their own, with a dynamic and formal language all their own. Recently Zinn is about to realize some of these works in steel and aluminum. I see Zinn's work as a bold, confident contribution to the discourse on painting and sculpture. His position as an artist refreshingly emancipates itself from discussions about the legitimacy of painting - and in doing so, empowers himself to address a basic universal human need: to get in touch with the world. (Victor Gisler, Owner Mai 36 Gallery, Zurich)

Zinn always works along thematic groups, which content he systematically explores. These groups consist of intentionally selected, omnipresent motifs, such as a window, a chair, a head or a person. In my perception, the artist draws our attention to how the artwork becomes reality through the constant interaction of hand and head. He puts everything on one card: the card of the medium in which he works, letting the rawness of the material speak in all its immediacy, the application of color, the overpainting and scraping or even the addition of forms to a sculptural entity. This demonstrative rawness in his use of material sometimes reminds me of the immediacy of Francis Bacon's application of paint to the raw canvas. Nevertheless, Zinn has developed his very own distinctive methodology and visual language through which he succeeds in returning painting, as well as sculpture, to its original forces. (Dr. Michael Stankiewicz, Wolkenlos Collection, Munich)

Zinn's works have been, among others, exhibited at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2010), in the Exhibition: Ambigu, contemporary painting between abstraction and narration together with artists such as Mary Heilmann, Raoul de Keyser and Rebecca Morris. Zinn’s works are part of internationally recognized collections, including the collection of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, the Crailsheim Collection, Dresden, Wolkenlos Collection, Munich and the Collection of Blake Byrne, Los Angeles.