MATT GLIVA
True Foe
Opening: November 8th, 6-8 PM
November 8th - December 13th, 2025
Half Gallery is pleased to present True Foe, Matt Gliva’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.
Caught somewhere between sculpture and theater, Gliva’s installation takes the viewer on a hero’s journey.
A knowing reference to the classic François Truffaut film which launched the French New Wave Cinema is 400 Blows, a triptych of metal paintings. Pounded out exactly four hundred times with a resin fist cast of the artist’s hand, the painting explores the trials and tribulations of the human experience, specifically the artist’s first three decades of life: a beat up, yet still-standing, self-portrait.
Gliva’s creative process positions the artist as a contemporary Thor, protector of humans and gods, pounding his hammer. He’ll take the punches so we don’t have to. Yet, the shiny, polished surfaces become mirrors, reflecting fractured selves back to the viewer, another potential blow.
On the opposite wall are a series of six towel sculptures, Actors: Ave (queen), Ubu (king), Rok (rook), Fil (bishop), Asp (knight), Mat (pawn). Linen towels, with more than twenty coats of white latex paint, create a ghost-like figure with their multiple folds and creases. The paint simultaneously embalms and immortalizes the object and its form.
They are receptacles of the artist’s anxieties and desires, insecurities, hope and dreams - a soft towel wrapped in layers of protective coating: impenetrable. Mat (Pawn) is installed with a poplar crown atop it’s head, a dunce in the corner. These Actors are versions of the human experience, various self-states, hung in descending order.
In the slightly off-center of the exhibition is Moderation Society, a chess set that can be played but must be done so while kneeling: a performative act of penance and humility. The metronome atop the board is a constant reminder of our own mortality and creates a sense of anxiety while trying to master the game. Each piece is hand carved oak or cast cement, aping the shape of the Temperance Fountain* in nearby Tompkins Square Park. However, in this case, the artist carves or casts the negative space, re-imagining a neo-classical open-air structure into a brutalist, heavy block.
Moderation Society also requires a partner. Who will choose to play? The anxiety while waiting, kneeling on solid mahogany -a dense and heavy wood - gives the player plenty of time to reckon with their own selves and the roles they inhabit.
*A gift from San Francisco dentist, businessman, and temperance crusader Henry D. Cogswell, who was affiliated with the Moderation Society to address health conditions on the Lower East Side
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