Matt Saunders
Born 1975 in Tacoma, Washington, USA
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Matt Saunders´ main sources of inspiration are old avant-garde films and
television archives. He re-casts this cinematographic iconography into paintings.
These hybrid forms interrogate how images live in different materials and in the
viewer´s experience.
Trained as a painter, Saunders´ process is a painting/photography hybrid whose
final form is a photographic print. At their most basic, his works begin with small
ink on mylar sketches (4“ x 5“) derived from film and television stills. These mylar
sketches are then used as negatives, either contact printed (laid directly on top
of photo paper and then developed), or placed in an enlarger. As negatives, the
mylar sketches are done in reverse-those parts which appear lighter in the
photograph are darker on the painted negative and vice versa. Some of the larger
images are contact printed using a large sheet of mylar to which Saunders has
applied a variety of materials-oil paint, reflective metallic ink, cut paper, tape.
Under a sheet of glass, the large mylar sketch is placed directly on the photo
paper which is then exposed and developed.
Matt Saunders was born in 1975 in Tacoma (Washington, USA) and lives in
Berlin and Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA), where he is a Visiting Lecturer at
Harvard University. He studied at Harvard and at Yale University, where he
trained as a painter. In 2010, he had a solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society,
Chicago. His recent group exhibitions include: “Plot for a Biennial“, 10th Sharjah
Biennial (2011), “The Anxiety of Photography“, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado
(2011), “The more things change“, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010-
2011), “Untitled (History Painting)“, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann
Arbor (2009), “Freeway Balconies“, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2008),
“Blind Date Istanbul“, Sabanci Museum, Istanbul (2007).
Matt Saunders, Danger Man (Pensive) #4, 2010-2011, silver gelatin print on fiber-based paper, 148 x 102 cm | 58.27 x 40.16 in, # SAUN0001