Biography
Izak Matatya

Biography

Izak Matatya has been exploring the graphics capabilities of a home computer ever since PC's were around in the early 80's. Being both an artist and an engineer, Izak Matatya was able to dither the only 16 colours available in 1982 on an RGB composite monitor, dividing each pixel into a 6 X 6 matrix and thus obtaining 576 different colours to work with.

Izak Matatya was one of the first artists to use the home computer as an art media, seeing it as the wave of the future. He is a distinguished member of Infographie Canada and has exhibited in numerous events:

- Images du Future, 1986 -1988 Old Port, Montreal, Canada
- Gala des Sepharades, 1987-1989, Montreal, Canada
- INA - Institut Nationale de l'Audiovisuelle, 1988, Paris, France
- Imagina - Monte Carlo, 1989
- Moriah Gallery, 1989 - 2000, Washington DC, USA
- Unesco Exhibitions, 1990, Montreal, Canada, 1992 Hamburg, Germany
- Monday Night Special - CBC TV show, 1992, Montreal, Canada
- SIDIM 2011 - Le Salon international du design de Montréal

Izak Matatya uses his exceptional talents in music, mathematics and software architecture to score colour and movement on his computer. Izak Matatya's reputation has spread to Paris, New York, Washington and Rome, where his works are the subjects of books, exhibitions, CD cover pages, live concert visuals and even textile designs on silk. His works have retained the attention of many avant-garde critics all around the world.

The images are varied: woven Vasarely-like geometrics, sheets of colour resembling the Aurora Borealis, vortexes, force perspectives and galactic starbursts. They are the visualization of free-rein imagination with tantalizing names such as spiral elliptoids, propagating sinusoids, dual polar connections, intersecting waves, epicyclic fantasies.

Those half mystical and half mathematical iterations are the results of the explorations of the visual possibilities of combined formulas some of them as old as the 17th century.

Walking into one of Izak Matatya's art galleries is like entering the bridge of a spaceship. Past huge windows rush galactic showers of stars. It's a voyage that takes you right into the colorful heart of the Northern Lights on another planet or into a dizzying, endless perspective. The "windows" are really board mounted Cibachrom or Ilfichrom prints and transparencies in light-boxes plugged into wall outlets.
 

* * *



Izak Matatya

QUAND LE PINCEAU SE FAIT PC

Izak Matatya explore les confins de la musique et de la peinture, où les notes se font couleurs et les formes s'épanouissent en contrepoints. Son vaisseau d'exploration? Un PC armée d'une multitude de programmes conçus par l'artiste pour rendre à l'imagination la priorité absolue.

Dès son enfance, Izak Matatya observe passionnément le monde qui l'entoure: écorces d'un tronc, alvéoles d'une ruche se gravent dans sa mémoire. Ses dons pour la musique s'affirment également, et il devient avec les années pianiste classique émérite.

Son défi lui apparaît alors clairement: partager avec le public son univers imaginaire où formes, couleurs et musique s'harmonisent et se complètent en mettant à contribution sa formation professionnelle d'informaticien.

Le résultat est une symphonie de couleurs et de mouvements qui a déjà suscité l'intérêt des milliers de visiteurs de l'Exposition "Images du Futur" au Vieux Port de Montréal au cours de l'été 1987, et retenu l'attention des critiques.

Pour Izak Matatya, le voyage vient à peine de commencer. Travailleur inlassable et insomniaque, il repousse sans cesse les limites du possible à la recherche d'une simplicité qu'il pourrait exprimer dans son entière complexité.