For Immediate Release:

Shooting Gallery Presents:
Ephemera, New Work by Pedro Matos

Shooting Gallery is pleased to present Ephemera, a series of striking new painted works by Portuguese artist Pedro Matos. This will be Matos’ first solo project at Shooting Gallery, following his participation in group projects at sister spaces White Walls and 941 Geary last year. The opening reception is Saturday, September 3, from 7-11 pm, and the exhibition is free and open to the public for viewing through September 24.

The works featured in Ephemera are the newest iteration of Matos’ masterful oil-on-canvas explorations, featuring a complex layering of texture, pattern and portraiture. He collects inspiration from a variety of sources, and photographs people, places, and aesthetic details to pull from for his finished works. Matos’ new canvases are a result of the piling-up of things he is drawn to, torn-up, remixed, and given the appearance of ripped paper – set to mimic the aesthetic of worn, shredded posters pasted to the side of a building. Through this visual language, Matos hopes to pull the viewer into a conversation surrounding impermanence, and the constant shifting of social, political, moral, cultural and aesthetic ideas.

His investigation of life’s ephemeral nature has led him to create a body of work that vividly juxtaposes beauty with decay, something he encounters daily in contemporary urban spaces. The patterning he utilizes in these works comes directly from traditional Portuguese designs, layered with advertisements from the street, rendered meticulously in bright oil paint. For Ephemera, the artist plans to present approximately 8 original paintings, in addition to some brand-new installation work.

Underneath it all, Matos works with portraiture based on subjects that lie outside of what popular culture craves: instead of models, celebrities or cultural icons, he works to represent the kind of people he regularly encounters. Family members, people that are a part of his immediate community, personalities encountered out in the streets, and other subjects that fall in this same vein. The forgotten, the overlooked, the underappreciated members of society all take precedence here, where the slick transience of advertising culture fails to do anything more than fade away with very little time.

Pedro Matos was born in 1989 in Santarém, Portugal and started painting at the age of 16, inspired by his immersion in graffiti, skateboarding and street culture. Pedro went on to pursue a formal education in painting and art history, which brought him to study at Central Saint Martins in London, and Ar. Co in Lisbon. Matos has exhibited works internationally, with previous shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portugal, Spain and London. He currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal.

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The Shooting Gallery opened its doors in 2024 to the historic Tenderloin district of San Francisco, known for its lively street culture. Growing up in Southern California gave owner and curator Justin Giarla a love for everything lowbrow: pop art, street art, outsider art, punk rock album art, comic book art, surf/skate art and hot rod culture. Giarla recognizes how important it is to provide lowbrow artists with a platform for their work, which is exactly what Shooting Gallery has done for nearly a decade.

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Media Opportunities:
Interview with artist Pedro Matos
Interview with owner/founder/curator Justin Giarla
High-resolution images available upon request

Event Information:
“Ephemera,” New Works by Pedro Matos
Opening Reception – September 3, 2024, 7-11 pm
On View Through September 24, 2024,
@ Shooting Gallery (shootinggallerysf.com)
839 Larkin St,
San Francisco, CA