Matthew J Russo

About the Artist

Matthew Russo was born in 1996 in Worcester, MA. In 2018 he earned his BFA in Painting from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. As part of his education, he studied abroad in Prato, Italy where he studied traditional forms of painting and printmaking. In 2020 he graduated with his MFA degree from American University in Washington, D.C. He currently lives and works in Washington, D.C. as a Studio Technician, Educator, and Artist.

Artist's Statement

Things are both concrete and ambiguous. They have developed and known material and visual attributes, and they also have unknown and unobtainable qualities that make them feel animated and powerful. My work borrows from these ideas. I turn materials that require time and an understanding of a craft into abstracted esoteric forms of semi-understandable shapes. I sew, paint, pour, mush, cleave, measure, and construct things out of fabric, foam, resin, plastic, wood, paint, and paper pulp. They range from brightly colored to neutral. Some are awkward and clunky, while others appear more subtle. These abstract forms are often extracted from the things I consume and observe like plastic toys, scraps of clothing, the garbage that I pick up off the ground, chunks of a demolished building, the odd screenshots from the internet on my phone. These objects are remnants of consumerism that have specific trajectories and lives that have crossed my own and they wrench my attention to them. My work tries to capture this relationship in form, materials, and processes.