Matt Rich, MFA

Associate Professor, Visual Arts
Program Director

• MFA, Painting and Drawing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  
• BA (with Honors), Visual Art and History of Art and Architecture, Brown University

Rich’s work combines a range of two- and three-dimensional materials to implicate objects and architecture in ways that challenge the definitions of painting’s supports and surfaces. The integration of alternative support structures and flat compositions complicates the relationship between painted and sculptural space—ultimately encroaching on and activating the walls and the surrounding institution.

These installations explicitly blur the boundaries around the conventions of display—co-opting pedestals and sculptural walls as surfaces and structures for painted images. He arranges mixed groupings of wall-objects, pedestal-sculptures, painting-sculptures, framed and unframed floor- and wall-paintings that relate to gallery architecture. The typical display of painting (marks-on-surface-on-support) or object (sculpture-on-pedestal-on-floor) is expanded into a looser, fluid exchange between these categorical elements. Rich uses painted canvas in many forms, including as drapery, adhered to pedestal sides, as wallpaper, area rugs—tucked, slung, stuffed, flopped, laminated, pressed into a variety of arrangements. Objects are painted, carved, coated, covered, strung up and suspended, abutted, used to buttress, stack, or in some other supportive role.

He has held numerous solo exhibitions including at Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton and New York, NY; LaMontagne Gallery and Samson Projects, Boston, MA; Devening Projects, Chicago, IL; and The Athenaeum, La Jolla, CA. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; The San Diego International Airport; Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH; MIT List Art Center, Cambridge, MA; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO.

In the last few years, his collaborative work made with Prof. Victoria Fu was exhibited in solo presentations at the Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA; University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA; and Station Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. Recent groups exhibitions featuring their collaborative work were held at The Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.

His work has been written about in publications such as Modern Painters, Artforum, Art Papers, and The Boston Globe, and Rich has received grants from the Howard Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Terra Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and he has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Areas of Interest