Matthew

Shelley

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Matthew Shelley’s work exists at the intersection of precision and spontaneity, a space where structure dissolves into fluidity. Moving away from the confines of traditional painting, Shelley finds liberation in the act of cutting, layering, and reassembling, creating compositions that feel both deliberate and instinctively raw. By integrating his photography to make his collages, he transforms captured fragments of reality into new, abstracted forms, blurring the lines between image and material. His practice, deeply rooted in experimentation, is a meditation on movement and adaptability, a reflection of his desire to embrace the unpredictable.

My studio work begins with photography, and is elaborated upon using collage. When photographing, my compositions are often tightly compressed and intentionally flat. Depicting spaces at close range, I focus on details, rather than complete views. My work considers the experience before total comprehension, when small information and slight sensations are beginning to orient us.

During graduate school, painting began to feel restrictive because it required me to work with limited materials on a single surface. Experiments in college proved to be much more responsive, and less inhibited than my work in painting. Eventually, collage became my center focus, as I cut up previous paintings and reassembled them into new compositions. Later in my career, I started practicing photography, and began using my photographs as the basis for collage. I find the fluid movements of collage to be much more compatible with my mindset than the more static experience of painting.

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My subjects tend to be commonplace, natural objects. The majority of my work deals with land and environmental themes, but not necessarily from a topical or political angle. Instead, my interests are centered on perspective and experience, focusing on how we absorb spaces and understand our environment.

My studio work moves between days spent photographing at different locations, or days spent in the studio printing and assembling finished work. I appreciate the variation in the two routines. Photography prompts me to interact with the world outside of the studio, and enables me to find textures, lighting, and scenarios that I would not be able to invent on my own. However, I also enjoy the structure and organization of the time spent editing and constructing new arrangements in the studio.

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After shifting from painting to collage, I spent several years dissecting and reassembling older work into new compositions. This process eventually exhausted itself as I ran out of paintings to work with. When I became interested in photography, I started using my photographs as material for new collage. This ended up giving me a path to explore photography further, because I was rarely looking to photograph something as an end unto itself, but instead using the picture as a building block for future collage arrangements.

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Matthew Shelley (b. 1983, Ashland, OR) is from the Pacific Northwest and attended the University of Oregon. He received his MFA from American University in 2010. His work has been exhibited throughout the US, and is included in regional and international collections at the Katzen Art Museum in Washington, DC and the Nes Artist Residency Program in Iceland. Matthew has held teaching positions at Moravian University, State University New York, and Fairfield University. Recent exhibitions include galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and at Rhode Island School of Design. Matthew currently lives and works in Connecticut, outside of New York City.

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