Matt Morris / Madame Web
April 6—May 5, 2018
ADDS DONNA
3252 W. North Avenue
Chicago, IL 60647
Photos by: Holly Murkerson
For the past several years, Matt Morris
has been making paintings of paintings by conceptual artist Sherrie Levine.
After numerous public exhibitions of works that directly referenced or quoted
from other artists’ practices, Levine began making abstract paintings without
specific source material in 1985. That same year, Morris was born as an
identical conjoined twin, and was separated from his twin four days after
birth. Considering the interruption of Levine’s dialogical method of production
at the time of his birth, Morris aims to hold forms of memory and history
together. Melancholy, object loss, and other psychoanalytic forms support this
inquiry. He has constructed an archive of source references to Levine’s
painting practice and reenacts the paintings at the same scale and in the same
materials that Levine used previously.
Matt Morris is an
artist, writer, and sometimes curator based in Chicago. He analyzes forms of
attachment and intimacy through painting, perfume, photography, and
institutional critique. He has presented artwork at Adds Donna, The Bike Room,
Gallery 400, The Franklin, peregrineprogram, Queer Thoughts, Sector 2337, and
Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL; The Mary + Leigh Block Museum of Art in
Evanston, IL; The Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL; Fjord and Vox Populi in
Philadelphia, PA; The Contemporary Arts Center, U·turn Art Space, Aisle, and
semantics in Cincinnati, OH; Clough-Hanson Gallery and Beige in Memphis, TN;
Permanent.Collection in Austin, TX; Cherry + Lucic in Portland, OR; The Poor
Farm in Manawa, WI; with additional projects in Reims, France; Greencastle, IN;
Lincoln, NE; and Baton Rouge, LA. Morris is a transplant from southern
Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and earned an MFA
in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate
in Gender + Sexuality Studies. In Summer 2017 he earned a Certification in
Fairyology from Doreen Virtue, PhD. He is a lecturer at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago and a contributor to Artforum.com, ARTnews, Art Papers,
Flash Art, Pelican Bomb, and Sculpture; and his writing appears in numerous
exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.