Altamira Fine Art in Jackson Hole, WY is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Geoffrey Gersten June 3-17, 2025.
Please join us for the Artist Reception on Thursday, June 5th from 5-7pm.
Geoffrey Gersten Plays With Matches
"There is an allure and mystique that accompanies these matchbooks, knowing that they once sat on the tiled kitchen counter in a 1950's home, or they rode along in someone's pocket as they drove a 57' Bel Air, and ended up in a desk drawer...” – Geoffrey Gersten
Geoffrey Gersten is known for his vibrant paintings celebrating the beauty of bygone eras. Turning his attention to matchbooks as his subjects, his latest body of work celebrates these small, collectible gems which were once an everyday item. “I've been having so much fun collecting these little matchbooks and opening them - like discovering little, untouched packets of memories from my favorite decade. Finding matchbooks with the popular brands of the era is exciting, but sometimes even more appealing are the intricate and oh so cute artful matchbooks from a small, local diner or hotel that I've never seen and perhaps hardly a soul would remember. Yet here they are again, telling their tiny story of life from another time,” the artist says.
As he embarked on this new series, one surprising element was the depth of possibilities Gersten discovered when he stuck with it. The more paintings he did and the more objects he arranged, the more tricks and layouts revealed themselves to him. Unable to shut off outside the studio, he sometimes lay awake at night designing paintings in his mind, using hypothetical matchbooks with imagined themes, which he would then try and track down to recreate his vision. “I saw sometimes specific and sometimes vague compositions in my mind, which I then set out to replicate in real life the following day”, Gersten says. His 2025 exhibition in Jackson Hole features over a dozen new works featuring not only matchbooks but other vintage ephemera.
Geoffrey Gersten is an internationally represented artist based in Scottsdale, Arizona. After early success as a CAD designer for Honeywell and Boeing, he began painting professionally in 2007. A self-taught artist, his signature style developed from the confluence of abstract expressionism and photorealism. His work explores themes of personal realization meeting popular culture. Gersten’s work has been featured in American Art Collector Magazine, Phoenix Home and Garden and The Aspen Times.
Pre-sales are available. Contact the gallery for details, 307-739-4700/ connect@altamiraart.com.
