The Players by Nathaniel Matthews
The Players by Nathaniel Matthews
Self-published, 2025 | Limited first edition of 50 copies | Softcover
The Players offers an intimate glimpse into the research and creative process behind Nathaniel Matthews' solo exhibition This Loneliness, 2025 at Entrance, NYC. The publication documents the artist's performative journey from Brooklyn to Staten Island's Jade Island tiki bar, weaving together photography and reference imagery to explore themes of escapism, fantasy, and cultural mythology. Matthews dissects his own role as performer, consumer, and voyeur, tracing the emotional logic that connects vaudeville theatrics, tiki culture, and the peculiar symbolism of condensed milk.
The book functions as both artist's catalog and meditation on constructed imagery, examining how fantasy travels, adheres, and ultimately fails to deliver satisfaction. Matthews presents his contradictions without resolution, staging them with the same theatrical distance that defines his visual work a gesture that flirts between parody and earnestness, leaving readers to navigate their own entanglements within the mythology of escape.
The Players by Nathaniel Matthews
Self-published, 2025 | Limited first edition of 50 copies | Softcover
The Players offers an intimate glimpse into the research and creative process behind Nathaniel Matthews' solo exhibition This Loneliness, 2025 at Entrance, NYC. The publication documents the artist's performative journey from Brooklyn to Staten Island's Jade Island tiki bar, weaving together photography and reference imagery to explore themes of escapism, fantasy, and cultural mythology. Matthews dissects his own role as performer, consumer, and voyeur, tracing the emotional logic that connects vaudeville theatrics, tiki culture, and the peculiar symbolism of condensed milk.
The book functions as both artist's catalog and meditation on constructed imagery, examining how fantasy travels, adheres, and ultimately fails to deliver satisfaction. Matthews presents his contradictions without resolution, staging them with the same theatrical distance that defines his visual work a gesture that flirts between parody and earnestness, leaving readers to navigate their own entanglements within the mythology of escape.
The Players by Nathaniel Matthews
Self-published, 2025 | Limited first edition of 50 copies | Softcover
The Players offers an intimate glimpse into the research and creative process behind Nathaniel Matthews' solo exhibition This Loneliness, 2025 at Entrance, NYC. The publication documents the artist's performative journey from Brooklyn to Staten Island's Jade Island tiki bar, weaving together photography and reference imagery to explore themes of escapism, fantasy, and cultural mythology. Matthews dissects his own role as performer, consumer, and voyeur, tracing the emotional logic that connects vaudeville theatrics, tiki culture, and the peculiar symbolism of condensed milk.
The book functions as both artist's catalog and meditation on constructed imagery, examining how fantasy travels, adheres, and ultimately fails to deliver satisfaction. Matthews presents his contradictions without resolution, staging them with the same theatrical distance that defines his visual work a gesture that flirts between parody and earnestness, leaving readers to navigate their own entanglements within the mythology of escape.