Featuring newly produced photographs, installations and sound pieces, AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH is rooted in identity and belonging, subculture, class and family. Matić’s diaristic, snapshot-like photography captures everyday moments with poetic intimacy. The images, combined with collected objects, film and sound, form a vivid and layered portrait of contemporary life.
Rene Matić, Kiss, Glastonbury Festival, 2024 © Rene Matić.
Detail from Rene Matić, Feelings Wheel, 2022 - 2024, Installation of acrylic framed photo series and sound piece, Dimensions Variable. Courtesy the Artist and Arcadia Missa, London.
Matić’s practice spans across photography, film and sculpture, converging in a meeting place they describe as "rude(ness)" – an evidencing and honouring of the in-between. In a climate of rising right-wing populism and performative compassion, they turn to interpersonal relationships as spaces of resistance and care, how people hold on to one another, and learn to live with vulnerability – despite, or in defiance of, so-called contemporary ‘truths’. For Matić, intimacy, vulnerability and desire become tools for survival.
More about Rene Matić
Rene Matić (b. 1997, Peterborough, UK) is a London-based artist and writer. Matić uses documentary, diaristic style of photography, with snapshots of everyday moments and poetic juxtapositions, which are then used to create installations, grouping images to surreptitiously bring out buried tensions and paradoxes.
Recent solo exhibitions include AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, CCA Berlin, Berlin; Rene Matić/Oscar Murillo JAZZ, Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier, Vienna; AT (2024); a girl for the living room, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol, UK (2023); upon this rock, Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna, AT (2023) and South London Gallery, London, UK (2022), soul time, Studio Voltaire, London UK (2022), fags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do, Arcadia Missa, London, UK (2021). Their work has also featured in many group exhibitions and is in several prominent collections, including Tate, London and Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris (FR); UK Government Art Collection, London (UK); Arts Council Collection, London (UK) and South London Gallery, London. Matić is nominated for the 2025 Turner Prize.
