Matt Connors. stud / file

About

His work draws upon the history of painting and processes, particularly minimalism and abstraction, but is also influenced by design, poetry, writing and music. While his visual vocabulary is often borrowed from the modernist canon – colours, gestures, grids, framing devices and compositions – Connors’ approach to his work is resolutely contemporary in both method and conception. In terms of materials and colouration, his work triggers emotional and intuitive responses. At the same time, it opens up a range of intellectual questions concerning mimesis, iteration and simulacra. Connors often works in series of interlinked, yet wholly autonomous works, in which a lively dialogue is established between repetition and variations in colours and form. Although his paintings might appear to depict something ‘real’ – a familiar work of art for example – there is, in fact, no ‘original’. Taken to the logical conclusion, Connors’ paintings could be viewed as having superseded the reality upon which they are based. Matt Connors is also known for his large-scale installations and artist books.

Matt Connors (b. 1973, Chicago) lives and works between New York and Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Impressionism, MoMA PS1, New York (2012) and Gas...Telephone...One Hundred Thousand Rubles, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf (2011). Recent group exhibitions include New York Painting, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn; The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, MoMA, New York and Painter, Painter at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2013). In 2012, he published the award-winning book A Bell is a Cup.