Matt Saunders, US

Matt Saunders’ work positions itself between painting and photography. At their most basic, his hybrid works begin with small ink on mylar sketches derived from film and television stills.

These sketches are then used as negatives, either contact printed (laid directly on top of photo paper and then developed), or placed in an enlarger. The result is a hazy intimacy. Fluctuating between abstract and figurative, the motif reaches the surface; a person emerges in an indistinct place, abandoned. The expressive re-rendering found in the works of Saunders becomes a way to recalibrate our sensibility as unknown aspects come to light.

Matt Saunders (b. 1975) studied at Harvard, Cambridge and at Yale University, where he was trained as a painter. He has been the recipient of the American Letter & Press (2023), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award (2009) and the PrixJean- François Prat award (2013). Saunders has exhibited his work internationally at such institutions as the Tate Liverpool(2012) and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2010). His work has been shown in group exhibitions at the Aspen ArtMuseum, Colorado (2011), the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2008), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, SanFrancisco (2008), and P.S. 1 MoMA, Long Island City (2001).