ABOUT MATT SHERIDAN

I wanted to make paintings with a plug-and-play attitude — like in a punk band, with a throat and three instruments ripping through only three chords — so I could just fucking paint, unworried about making mistakes, without having to stumble my way through every painting. I like abstract paintings with very discrete marks for maximum graphic dissonance between moves. So I started making digital collages from real paint marks scanned into Photoshop for instant gratification. I integrated folds into the process after a scanning accident while digitizing strokes and scrapes of paint.

I threw some images together quickly. While thinking about painting my first collages, I saw the marks move onscreen and realized I COULD ANIMATE THEM TOO. So I started thinking like a computer, sequencing my painted marks on paper to be digitized, then animated in the machine. The term digital is both electronic and of fingers, conflicted at its origin. Nowadays hand-making is a form of resistance. My collages are dematerialized lo-res models waiting to be scaled up and rematerialized into paintings or animations.

Compositionally my work often captures the split-second just before or just as conflict is initiated. I find the last instance of something before it’s forever changed a beautiful moment. Just when I think I know what my animations are doing or are about while making them, there’s always a point where what I’m doing feels out of sync with the ACTUAL content. From there I listen to my little voice, adjust and simplify — extracting lingering narratives screwing up my process to use for titles — and suddenly the work powers up. Then I’m in an obsessed trance until that twelve letter word is done, whether it’s a painting, painting-in-motion animation, or a video I can walk around, aka sculpture.

Matt Sheridan’s video-based action painting explores worlds of constructivist expressionism where his work’s meaning comes from its actions. Each of his “painting-in-motion” videos unpacks its painting analog into experiential, architectural projections sometimes edited live on-the-spot. Trained as an animator, Sheridan earned his BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts and his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute and NYU in New York and Singapore, and at UCLA’s Geffen Academy. Sheridan worked on television productions including Beavis and Butt-Head and Blue’s Clues, screened work in two Olympic Games, exhibited work in museums such as Centre Pompidou, the Jeu de Paume in Paris and most recently CICA Museum in South Korea, won grants — including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant for painting — and otherwise participated in exhibitions, residencies, fellowships and events from Finland to Japan, India to Brazil, France to Australia and USA from New York to Miami to Los Angeles. Matt Sheridan’s work is in American collections in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, and also Australian collections in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS / PROJECTS

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

GRANTS / FELLOWSHIPS / RESIDENCIES + AWARDS

EDUCATION