Rene Matić

upon this rock, 2023

Concrete Projects is pleased to support Rene Matić’s first solo international institutional exhibition at Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna.

upon this rock continues Matić’s long-term interrogation of ‘Britishness’ and addresses themes of subculture, faith and family.

The exhibition is something of a love letter to the artist’s father, who features in a new film work Many Rivers.

‘I always wanted to tell my dad’s story’, Matić says. Born ‘out of wedlock’ to a white Irish Catholic woman and a man from St. Lucia in 1962, under the weight of prejudice from the church, Matić’s grandmother left her new family unit for Ireland and was never heard of again. The film uncovering this history is ‘an attempt at filling these gaps for him, because my whole life he’s kind of been tortured by this ambiguity. I set out to learn and to tell this story, which is really a story, again, about the cause and effect of pain and suffering – and what saves us?’

The exhibition also featured new images from the artist’s ongoing photography series entitled flags for countries that don’t exist but bodies that do. This series is a personal diary documenting Matić’s community and family (chosen and otherwise), as well as being a portrait and deconstruction of contemporary Britain.

Concrete Projects provided financial support to this exhibition.