Born 1975, Tacoma (Washington, USA)
Lives and works in Berlin, New York and Boston
Matt Saunders studied at Harvard, Cambridge and at Yale University, where he was trained as a painter. Saunders’ works are a painting/photography hybrid whose final form is a photographic print. At their most basic, his works begin with small ink on mylar sketches 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.
Matt Saunders’ work has been in numerous group exhibitions including at: The Drawing Room, London (2026); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain (2025); Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, New York (2023); Ecole des Beaux arts de Paris, France (2022); American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York (2022); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020); Mass MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts (2017); The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2013); de Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2012); the 2011 Sharjah Biennal; and the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2011). His work is in the collections of major institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the UCLA Hammer Museum, California; the Tate, London; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Istanbul Modern; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., among others.
Saunders was a recipient of the 2022 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts Purchase Prize, the 2015 Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the 2013 Prix Jean-François Prat, and the 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award.
