Sharon Butler blogs about the exhibition Matthew Deleget: False Positives at Outlet Fine Art, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, on view through October 5, 2014.

Butler writes that Deleget "has never been particularly interested in traditional painting approaches such as wet-on-wet and glazing, color mixing, or other techniques that create the illusion of three dimensionality. Resolutely reductive, Deleget's practice is to make pristine, mid-size wooden panels and cover them with spray paint. For this series, he has done a little more, with a big impact. To wit, he has struck the surface of each painting with a small hammer until the smooth panel is pockmarked and sometimes destroyed. For many artists, such gestures would be violent acts rooted in personal frustration, but Deleget connects it with something larger. His intent is to create a visual equivalent to the damage US intervention has caused in Middle East countries, and he has succeeded quite elegantly. Improbably for a reductive artist, Deleget prompts us to vault past esoteric issues in contemporary abstraction to big issues in today's world."