Matt Connors

Matt Connors’ porous, abstract paintings and works on paper are both object and picture. His predominantly raw canvases are used as a stamp, pressing against other works to transfer pigment, and a textile, soaked in paint and prepped for further embellishment. His physical, emotional, and intellectual interest in material allows for a productive tension that is both romantic and theoretical. Connors also presents his works unhung, or in conversation with deliberately painted walls. Engaging with art history, Connors’ seeks out a moment of silent contemplation, where the forms emerge from the medium in front of him and the image is refreshingly unstable. He rewards his viewer “with the surprise of how elastic art can be” as he untangles the collective recognition of painting styles and reveals the satisfying friction inherent in painting. 

Connors has exhibited widely at institutions including MoMA PS 1, New York, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, Kunsthmuseum Bonn, Germany, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Kunsthalle Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, among others. He was Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, in 2015, and has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Grant and Belgacom Art Prize in 2012, among other honors. He was featured in the Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014.