MATT SAUNDERS

Matt Saunders (b. 1975, Tacoma, Washington) attended Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut (2000, MFA Painting/Printmaking), and Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1997, BA Visual and Environmental Studies). He has had solo exhibitions in numerous venues including Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York City (2003); Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva, Switzerland (2001); and Holyoke Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1999). His awards and honors include a Robert Schoelkopf Fellowship (2001), a Louis Sudler Prize (1997), and a Thomas T. Hoopes Prize (1997). Saunders lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

"Performance and self-consciousness, spectatorship and emulation are, by now, well-worn ideas, and mass cultural models have replaced the individual and family as basic units of philosophy and psychology. The culture market has swollen larger than any language that could describe it. We are, more than ever, finely attuned to the minor movements of things -- a hyper-sophisticated, mannered world of virtuosic culture portraying itself. Film, and, in other ways, history are our basic texts -- or subtexts. Online and on the streets, we stage elaborate performances of our passions for them. Nevertheless, the individual film, and the individual viewer, are mostly maudlin. And amazing.
        Jack Smith, and, in practice, Warhol, established ways of describing what happens with "actors all incandescently amok." My work began with an obsession with these recorded, almost intimate moments of performances that break down or never get started, or over-perform. History, too, over-performs (as does painting, usually). As I worked, the play between these found portraits of actors and their publicity stills went more into manner and style, and the amplification historical moments give to them. I work evenly between painting, drawing, and moving image, and I want my work to be specifically referential, extremely personal, and ultimately generalized and moving. Among other things, the work is self-implicating -- a diagram of my own preoccupations. Most recently, it's gone into the romance time in film, as it overlays lives, careers, plots, performances, and my own viewership."

Matt Saunders Hairdresser #2 (Udo and Elisabeth), 2003 Oil on linen 44 x 61 in. (111.8 x 154.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, New York     Matt Saunders Antlers (Moritzburg) #1, 2002 Ink on mylar 30 x 42 in. (76.2 x 106.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, New York     Matt Saunders Warren J. Harding's Pajamas, 2001 Ink on mylar 42 x 30 in. (106.7 x 76.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, New York

Matt Saunders
Udo (Egomania), 2001
Oil on linen
39 x 48 in. (99.1 x 121.9 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and
Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York,
New York
 
 

Matt Saunders
Udo (Egomania) #4, 2001
Oil on linen
39 x 48 in. (99.1 x 121.9 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and
Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York,
New York
 
 

Matt Saunders
Kracauer (Old), 2003
Ink on mylar
8 x 6-1/2 in. (20.3 x 16.5 cm)
Courtesy of the artist and
Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York,
New York
 

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