The Idea wants to become Flesh, and Flesh wants to become the Idea. Every artist, on some level, knows this. It is not enough to say ‘As Above, So Below’. If A simply equals B, everything collapses. What about the space in-between? What about the ascent and the descent, what about reciprocity and transformation? This is what concerns me, and that is why I call myself an artist. Take dreams for example, my goal is not to ‘depict’ them in paint or pencil, but to extend them, to let them grow into the physical world in the way that only the physical world could facilitate. I do not paint landscapes to ‘represent’ them, but to see them, to feel them, to fulfill them in me, and me in them. My ruled lines start as ruled lines not ‘stay on the page’ but to encounter a new idea, and to be moved by that idea. Flesh and Idea desire each other because they want to keep on living and to live one must go on changing. In this everything is transformed. A seed or a plant does not merely progress from one state to another, they become into and within each other. Miraculously: a new seed emerges, a new plant emerges. As an artist I’ve come to know that the seed and the plant, the Idea and the Flesh, are not the same and they are not different. They are the circulatory system of the World Body that is Becoming. I find myself here in the veins and arteries of this mysterious Body.

In the spirit of ‘productive polarity’ Matthew Cangiano has experimented with a vast number of mediums, schools of thought and of formal education. This includes some of the most contrasting polarities in arts education: an BFA at OCADU (2016), and two years at the traditional style atelier ‘Academy of Art Canada’, (2022-2024) where he studied and taught. Ultimately he remains ‘in-between’. Matthew currently works in Toronto, Ontario.