Quinn Matthews
b. 1995, USA
Lives and works between
Copenhagen and Los Angeles
BIOGRAPHY
Canadian American artist working across image, film, sculpture, and performance. In a conceptual practice he is primarily concerned with predictiveness and perception -images composed around something that has not yet happened, recurrence, or something that is about to be lost. His work is lens-based and often realized as photographic image and film, but also through various materialities and sculptural capacities to interrogate what is legible as an image.
Photography inherently arrives late, and the delay between exposure and audience lets an urgent subject become historical before anyone acts on it. Working against that delay and the idea of a late image is the concern he calls anticipatory aesthetics. By making legible potential futures through the work, we can act preventively rather than reactively. The method follows: he intervenes in images while they are still unsettled, still participating in the world rather than indexing it.
Matthews holds an MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts and is a two-time finalist for the Earth Partner Prize. He lives and works between Copenhagen and Los Angeles.
EDUCATION
2026 MFA, Photography and Media, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2018 BA, Chapman University (Brandman)
EXHIBITIONS
2026 SoCal MFA 2026 Annual Group Show, Claremont, CA. Organized by Claremont Graduate University. Exhibited: Implicated Image #12 (2026)
2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Main Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Exhibited: True Photographs (2025), Implicated Images (2026), 24 Hour(s of) Security (2026)
2026 Out To Pasture (Temporary Artworks), Inglewood, CA. Curated by Jade Solus, Dotted Line LA. Exhibited: Hole in the Sky (2025), outdoor installation
2026 The Ultimate Zone of Unspeakable Horror, C.I.A. (Sublevel), California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Organized by Mateo Alfonso, Jonas Höhn, Frances Sheehy, Colette Zighelboim. Exhibited: Canaries (2026)
2026 Apt. 206 Anonymous Show, Los Angeles, CA. Curated by Gail Foley, Luke Francis Austin. Exhibited: Hole in the Sky (2025), outdoor installation
2025 Skipping the Future, Los Angeles, CA. Curated by Sining Zhu, Art in Room. Exhibited: True Photographs (2025)
2025 SoCal MFA 2025 Annual Group Show, Claremont, CA. Organized by Claremont Graduate University. Exhibited: White Light (2024)
2024 Politics of Perspective, DUOS-, Los Angeles, CA
PERFORMANCE
2026 Vomidingle Movement Troupe, with Kenny Scharf. The Art Parade (LACMA, Deitch), Los Angeles, June 20, 2026
2026 24 Hour(s of) Security. Performance and installation: security camera, live feed, the Bijou Theater. California Institute of the Arts, March 23-27, 2026 (24 non-consecutive hours, 10 PM-4 AM nightly)
2026 (Marioni's) Happy Hour (C.I.A. BB5). Weekly happy hour held outside the BB5 photo studios on gallery nights, after Tom Marioni's The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art (FREE BEER), 1970 and ongoing. California Institute of the Arts, 2026
CURATORIAL
2024 Politics of Perspective, DUOS-, Los Angeles, October 29-November 15, 2024. Nine artists from seven Los Angeles MFA programs (ArtCenter, Claremont, CalArts, Otis, UC Irvine, UCLA, USC), opened one week before the 2024 election
2024 Founder, DUOS-, an independent exhibition platform curated by students for students, 1732 E. 14th St., Los Angeles
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
2026 Finalist, Earth Partner Prize (Art Partner), for Hole in the Sky
2025 Finalist, Earth Partner Prize (Art Partner), for UnEarth. Prize exhibition, Borgo Laudato si', Castel Gandolfo, Rome, September 10-October 4, 2025
THEATRE
2026 Is God Is, by Aleshea Harris, dir. Tramaine Raphael Gray. California Institute of the Arts, February 2026. Video Designer
2020 West Side Story, dir. Ivo van Hove. Broadway Theatre, New York, 2020. Video Director
FILMOGRAPHY
2024 An American Jesus. 16mm short film, 11 min. Writer and Director
2021 Beyond Conscious, Beneath Blood. Writer and Director
PUBLICATIONS
2026 Yearbook (Studies in Surveillance): California Institute of the Arts and Selected Works 2024-2026. Artist's book, 312 pages; texts and works by the artist, with contributed essays by Daniel M. Pope, Zack Raffin, and Alex Lavayen. Self-published (DUOS-), Los Angeles. Open edition, printed and bound by the artist from a single master copy
2024 Trilogy Now, Aether
2018 Above Else, with Woody Gooch. Self-published, edition of 333
2015 Until I Say Enough. Self-published
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zack Raffin, "A Study In Surveillance" (interview by Zack Raffin), Wasted Talent Magazine, July 2026
Irene Alison, "Uno scatto per il futuro: Dentro l'Earth Partner Prize," D la Repubblica, no. 1454, August 30, 2025 (UnEarth featured)
Holden Trnka, "375 Pages of Unseen Images and Interviews from Trilogy: New Wave," Stab Magazine, November 2024 (Trilogy Now featured)
Tony John-Andrews, "The Supernatural Present of a Surf Shooting Prodigy," The Surfer's Journal, vol. 32, no. 6, December 2023
Jamie Krups, "Quinn Matthews' Expansive Career," Monster Children, July 2021
Ben Brantley, "West Side Story Review: Sharks vs. Jets vs. Video," The New York Times, February 2020
Bill Whitaker, "West Side Story: Behind the Scenes of the 2020 Revival," 60 Minutes, CBS, February 2020
Sasha Weiss, "How West Side Story was Reborn," The New York Times Magazine, February 2020
Jerry Portwood, "West Side Story Revival Breaks All the Rules for All the Right Reasons," Rolling Stone, February 2020
Charles McNulty, "West Side Story blasts back to Broadway - kinetic, bloody and modern to the core," Los Angeles Times, February 2020
"Global Gallery: Woody Gooch and Quinn Matthews," Champ Magazine, 2018 (Above Else featured)
Josh T. Saunders, "The Now," Surfer Magazine, April 2014
www.quinnmatthews.com
studio@qmatthews.com
b. 1995, USA
Lives and works between
Copenhagen and Los Angeles
BIOGRAPHY
Canadian American artist working across image, film, sculpture, and performance. In a conceptual practice he is primarily concerned with predictiveness and perception -images composed around something that has not yet happened, recurrence, or something that is about to be lost. His work is lens-based and often realized as photographic image and film, but also through various materialities and sculptural capacities to interrogate what is legible as an image.
Photography inherently arrives late, and the delay between exposure and audience lets an urgent subject become historical before anyone acts on it. Working against that delay and the idea of a late image is the concern he calls anticipatory aesthetics. By making legible potential futures through the work, we can act preventively rather than reactively. The method follows: he intervenes in images while they are still unsettled, still participating in the world rather than indexing it.
Matthews holds an MFA in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts and is a two-time finalist for the Earth Partner Prize. He lives and works between Copenhagen and Los Angeles.
EDUCATION
2026 MFA, Photography and Media, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
2018 BA, Chapman University (Brandman)
EXHIBITIONS
2026 SoCal MFA 2026 Annual Group Show, Claremont, CA. Organized by Claremont Graduate University. Exhibited: Implicated Image #12 (2026)
2026 MFA Thesis Exhibition, Main Gallery, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Exhibited: True Photographs (2025), Implicated Images (2026), 24 Hour(s of) Security (2026)
2026 Out To Pasture (Temporary Artworks), Inglewood, CA. Curated by Jade Solus, Dotted Line LA. Exhibited: Hole in the Sky (2025), outdoor installation
2026 The Ultimate Zone of Unspeakable Horror, C.I.A. (Sublevel), California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. Organized by Mateo Alfonso, Jonas Höhn, Frances Sheehy, Colette Zighelboim. Exhibited: Canaries (2026)
2026 Apt. 206 Anonymous Show, Los Angeles, CA. Curated by Gail Foley, Luke Francis Austin. Exhibited: Hole in the Sky (2025), outdoor installation
2025 Skipping the Future, Los Angeles, CA. Curated by Sining Zhu, Art in Room. Exhibited: True Photographs (2025)
2025 SoCal MFA 2025 Annual Group Show, Claremont, CA. Organized by Claremont Graduate University. Exhibited: White Light (2024)
2024 Politics of Perspective, DUOS-, Los Angeles, CA
PERFORMANCE
2026 Vomidingle Movement Troupe, with Kenny Scharf. The Art Parade (LACMA, Deitch), Los Angeles, June 20, 2026
2026 24 Hour(s of) Security. Performance and installation: security camera, live feed, the Bijou Theater. California Institute of the Arts, March 23-27, 2026 (24 non-consecutive hours, 10 PM-4 AM nightly)
2026 (Marioni's) Happy Hour (C.I.A. BB5). Weekly happy hour held outside the BB5 photo studios on gallery nights, after Tom Marioni's The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art (FREE BEER), 1970 and ongoing. California Institute of the Arts, 2026
CURATORIAL
2024 Politics of Perspective, DUOS-, Los Angeles, October 29-November 15, 2024. Nine artists from seven Los Angeles MFA programs (ArtCenter, Claremont, CalArts, Otis, UC Irvine, UCLA, USC), opened one week before the 2024 election
2024 Founder, DUOS-, an independent exhibition platform curated by students for students, 1732 E. 14th St., Los Angeles
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
2026 Finalist, Earth Partner Prize (Art Partner), for Hole in the Sky
2025 Finalist, Earth Partner Prize (Art Partner), for UnEarth. Prize exhibition, Borgo Laudato si', Castel Gandolfo, Rome, September 10-October 4, 2025
THEATRE
2026 Is God Is, by Aleshea Harris, dir. Tramaine Raphael Gray. California Institute of the Arts, February 2026. Video Designer
2020 West Side Story, dir. Ivo van Hove. Broadway Theatre, New York, 2020. Video Director
FILMOGRAPHY
2024 An American Jesus. 16mm short film, 11 min. Writer and Director
2021 Beyond Conscious, Beneath Blood. Writer and Director
PUBLICATIONS
2026 Yearbook (Studies in Surveillance): California Institute of the Arts and Selected Works 2024-2026. Artist's book, 312 pages; texts and works by the artist, with contributed essays by Daniel M. Pope, Zack Raffin, and Alex Lavayen. Self-published (DUOS-), Los Angeles. Open edition, printed and bound by the artist from a single master copy
2024 Trilogy Now, Aether
2018 Above Else, with Woody Gooch. Self-published, edition of 333
2015 Until I Say Enough. Self-published
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Zack Raffin, "A Study In Surveillance" (interview by Zack Raffin), Wasted Talent Magazine, July 2026
Irene Alison, "Uno scatto per il futuro: Dentro l'Earth Partner Prize," D la Repubblica, no. 1454, August 30, 2025 (UnEarth featured)
Holden Trnka, "375 Pages of Unseen Images and Interviews from Trilogy: New Wave," Stab Magazine, November 2024 (Trilogy Now featured)
Tony John-Andrews, "The Supernatural Present of a Surf Shooting Prodigy," The Surfer's Journal, vol. 32, no. 6, December 2023
Jamie Krups, "Quinn Matthews' Expansive Career," Monster Children, July 2021
Ben Brantley, "West Side Story Review: Sharks vs. Jets vs. Video," The New York Times, February 2020
Bill Whitaker, "West Side Story: Behind the Scenes of the 2020 Revival," 60 Minutes, CBS, February 2020
Sasha Weiss, "How West Side Story was Reborn," The New York Times Magazine, February 2020
Jerry Portwood, "West Side Story Revival Breaks All the Rules for All the Right Reasons," Rolling Stone, February 2020
Charles McNulty, "West Side Story blasts back to Broadway - kinetic, bloody and modern to the core," Los Angeles Times, February 2020
"Global Gallery: Woody Gooch and Quinn Matthews," Champ Magazine, 2018 (Above Else featured)
Josh T. Saunders, "The Now," Surfer Magazine, April 2014
www.quinnmatthews.com
studio@qmatthews.com