Bio
Matt is a visual artist from the southern United States. He spent the first part of his life in Louisiana and Mississippi. He completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design from Mississippi College (2005) and studied in London, UK as part of a program with University of London. He completed a Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University (2009) and returned to Europe to study design in Amsterdam. At FSU he was also a graduate teaching assistant in digital photography and digital foundations then taught as a postgraduate instructor.
In 2009 he accepted a position as the operations manager at Computers at VISUAL ARTS (CAVA) at the School of VISUAL ARTS and moved to New York City. CAVA is the college's on-campus computer store and technology procurement arm. Matt manages staff, sales, inventory, advertising, and design in the department.
Since his move to the city he has been involved in building and directing the Pinion Gallery in Brooklyn. The gallery has hosted seven exhibitions between 2010 and 2011 and is seeking to host exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Matt is interested in the philosophy of science, complexity, and epistimology. He creates large narrative drawings and paintings that explore rigid philosophical systems and how those structures react or do not react to genuine skeptical inquiry. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Statement of Artwork
My work is a reflection of my journey to find spiritual awakening, identity, and intellectual growth in order to create new institutions of the mind. I intend to reach this goal of realignment through knowledge, reason, and science. In states of higher awareness achieved by meditation or expansive thinking, the energies of the body are felt to be elusive, electrifying, and almost sublime. This realm of consciousness has been confined to rigid institutions and traditions that lack relevance to me as I search for updated and universal modes of representation.
Using a combination of drawing, painting, and new media applications, I attempt to render this realm of consciousness into form. In a transparent landscape, perhaps in the landscape of one’s self, my work depicts uncertainty through images of humans in a state of becoming or becoming undone. The lines may coalesce or fray, confine or release. Like a nest of neurons, the lines provide paths for activity; leading one's eyes through the artwork and forcing themselves into one's body. The lines visually and conceptually pulse to simulate a transformation of consciousness that is occurring in the figures represented.
These anthropomorphic ideals materialize into a landscape in which transparent figures are interacting in a combined, encompassing manifold. They pull, uproot, and hide the fragmented and systemic features to reveal intricate and repetitive systems that surround and penetrate the bodies. To transcend rigid traditions, I intend for my work to signify psychological change. I use willed introspection and mythological propositions to guide me, as schema, through this journey.