I orchestrate energies. I like abstract paintings made with very discrete marks for maximum graphic dissonance between moves.

 

My paintings are made with a plug-and-play attitude so I can just paint, unworried about making mistakes, without having to stumble my way through every painting. Thinking like a computer, I sequence my painted marks on paper, digitize them, then I animate them in the machine.

 

When I integrated folds into my process after a scanning accident, my style became apparent. What began as a simple way to make nonrepresentational paintings and animations quickly has evolved into worlds of constructivist expressionism where the meaning of my work comes from its actions. 

 

The term digital is both electronic and of fingers, divergent at its origin. Hand-making is now a form of resistance in our world dictated by algorithms and AI. My work questions our cultural addiction to story by fragmenting aspects of narrative — conflict, performance, setting — into limited painterly forms. My collages are dematerialized low-resolution models waiting to be scaled up and rematerialized into paintings, animations and sculptures spotlighting polarities between content, control, and ourselves. 

 

The split-second just before or just as confrontation is initiated is a beautiful moment. Just when I think I know what my animations are doing or are about in process, there’s always a point where what I’m doing feels out of sync with the actual content/meaning. From there I listen to my little voice, adjust and simplify, often by extracting lingering narratives screwing up my process for use as titles. Then the work powers up and I’m in an obsessed trance until a particular work is “done,” whether I’m making a painting, painting-in-motion animation, live-mixed video projection onto architecture, or a video I can walk around, aka sculpture.  

ABOUT MATT

BIO: 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 Pratt Institute, the School of Visual Arts, and NYU in New York and Singapore, and at UCLA’s Geffen Academy.

 

Sheridan worked on television productions for HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon and the NBA, screened work in festivals and two Olympic Games, exhibited work in museums such as Centre Pompidou and the Jeu de Paume in Paris; most recently at South Korea’s CICA Museum.

 

Sheridan has 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, Miami and Los Angeles; Australian collections in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; and a French collection on the Cote d’Azur.

 

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