Matt Connors

Matt Connors is a painter renowned for crafting compelling visual compositions, displaying a continuous fascination with form and color. His art is rooted in the traditions of painting and techniques, notably drawing inspiration from minimalism and abstraction, while also bearing the influence of design, poetry, writing, and music.

Biography of Matt Connors

Matt Connors was born in 1973 in Chicago, USA. Currently, the artist lives and works in New York.

He earned a BFA from Bennington College, Vermont, in 1995, and completed his M.F.A. at Yale University, New Haven, in 2006. In 2012, Connors published the award-winning book titled "A Bell is a Cup." Additionally, he served as an Artist in Residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, in 2015.

Connors's recent solo exhibitions include "Tune" at Herald St in London (2023); "Invert" at Lismore Castle Arts in Lismore (2022); and "Swap" at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels (2021), among others. The artist has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including "To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on Contemporary Abstract Painting" at Gagosian in London (2023); "Regarding Kimber" at Cheim&Read in New York (2022); "Gridscape" at Xavier Hufkens in Brussels (2021); "Fixing the 'not...but'" at LC Queisser in Tbilisi (2019), and many more.

Matt Connors was featured in the 2022 edition of the Whitney Biennial, titled "Quiet as It's Kept," at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Matt Connors's Art Style

Matt Connors explores fundamental aspects of contemporary abstraction within the realm of painting. Frequently, he begins his work with photographs or by observing his studio, drawing inspiration from details like patterns, silhouettes, or shapes, which he subsequently transfers onto paper or canvas.

Using a range of media, including acrylic, crayon, watercolor, oil paint, and silkscreen, Connors abstracts his source imagery through techniques like fragmentation, layering, and shifts in color and scale. His practice is nonlinear and open-ended, functioning as a systematic archive of his ongoing, deeply personal, and ever-evolving relationship with the world around him.

While he frequently draws upon the visual vocabulary of the modernist canon, including elements such as colors, gestures, grids, framing devices, and geometric compositions, Connors' approach remains firmly rooted in contemporary methods and concepts. In terms of coloration, his work elicits intuitive responses through intricate and playful palettes.