Matthew Craven

Attentive to physicality, Matthew Craven’s works on paper are laboriously hand-drawn on the backs of vintage B movie posters, adding a layer of age to pieces already absorbed in the passage of time. His kaleidoscopic gridded drawings pull from patterns seen in textiles, mosaics, flags, and ceramics from across the world, engaging in the universality of symbols and designs. Collage elements of art and architecture taken from vintage textbooks sometimes create juxtapositions with an eerie déjà-vu quality, a result of the cultural bedrock that is embedded in our psyches. Craven's fusions erase particularity, suggesting the primacy of geometric abstraction in our visual vocabulary and implying that patterns and perhaps histories across cultures reflect rather than oppose each other.

Matthew Craven was born in Michigan. He earned a BFA from Michigan State University, and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY. He has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, including solo and two-person exhibitions at Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco; Ampersand Gallery, Portland; David Shelton Gallery, Houston; Bass and Reiner, San Francisco; Volery Gallery, Dubai, UAE; DCKT Contemporary, NY; Allegra LaViola Gallery, NY; Marvelli Gallery, NY; Gallery Hijinks, San Francisco; Packing, Detroit; 101/Exhibit, Los Angeles; and Get This! Gallery, Atlanta. Group exhibitions include Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco; Mini Galerie, Amsterdam, NL; Essex Flowers, NY; Danese/Corey, NY; Hashimoto Contemporary, Los Angeles; SPRING/BREAK, NY; Muster-Meier, Switzerland; Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles; Perry Rubenstein, NY; and The Hole, NY; among others. He has participated in residencies with Marfa Myths Festival, TX; Tilleard Projects, Lamu Island, Kenya; The Jaunt, Bali, Indonesia; and The Watermill Center, NY. Craven has been reviewed in Juxtapoz Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Art Critical, The Huffington Post, Art F City, Glasstire, Widewalls, Artnet News, Art Observed, Musee Magazine, and Burnaway, and has curated exhibitions at DCKT, Asya Geisberg Gallery, and Nudashank.