Matthew Brown is pleased to present Lost Object, a group exhibition featuring works by Jean-Marie Appriou, Uri Aran, Dike Blair, Sedrick Chisom, Nat Faulkner, Lenz Geerk, Beaux Mendes, Diane Severin Nguyen, Rose Salane, TARWUK, and Cathy Wilkes.
Lost Object examines how human longing is shaped by absence—by that which feels missing, even when it was never entirely possessed. Drawing on Freud’s notion of the “lost object,” the exhibition considers how absence structures desire, memory, and imagination, persisting not as something to be recovered, but as a generative force. In this framework, loss is not a conclusion but a condition through which perception, recollection, and yearning are formed.
Throughout the exhibition, the lost object functions as a site of projection and melancholia. Culturally, it may surface as nostalgia; politically, as the sense that a shared meaning or collective identity has disintegrated. Formally, the lost object appears through artworks that resist resolution or certainty. Images held in suspension, marked by vulnerability, and forms that hover between recognition and ambiguity. Rather than offering closure, the works remain open-ended, allowing absence to remain active.
Even when loss proves illusory, the drive to replace what is missing endures. Lost Object frames absence not as an end point, but as an inexorable force.
