Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Matt Connors, born in 1973 in Chicago, is not just another abstract painter scavenging the leftovers of modernism like a starving vulture. No, this guy is a true agitator, transforming abstract painting into a subversive dance where every brushstroke is a deliberate provocation against our neatly arranged expectations.
Look at his canvases—those surfaces that seem painted with the carefree abandon of a child yet hide the precision of a surgeon. It’s no accident that his works feel oddly familiar, as if you’ve seen them somewhere before. That’s precisely his intention: a way of playing with our collective memory of abstract art, like a DJ mixing samples. But don’t be mistaken—this isn’t mere copy-paste.
The first defining feature of his work lies in his unique relationship with the pictorial surface. Connors doesn’t paint on the canvas; he paints into the canvas. His paint seeps into the fibers like water into sand, creating a paradoxical depth in what should be flat. This technique echoes Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “aura” of a work of art—except here, Connors flips the concept on its head. The aura doesn’t stem from the originality of the work but from its ability to make us question what we see.
He primarily uses Flashe acrylic, a matte paint that soaks into raw canvas like watercolor on paper. This technique produces works that seem to float between two states—neither entirely surface nor entirely object. It’s what Jacques Rancière would call a “distribution of the sensible”—a redistribution of what is visible and invisible, surface and depth.
His canvases are peppered with deliberate accidents—splashes, smudges, lines that don’t quite meet. These “errors” are not flaws but anchors for our gaze, moments where the illusion of abstract perfection cracks to reveal something more intriguing: the human presence behind the apparent machine.
The second defining feature of his work is how he plays with the historical references of abstract art. Take his large canvases like Stripes in Nature (2019) or JaJanus (2015). At first glance, they might appear as homages to Kenneth Noland or Ellsworth Kelly. But look closer: those geometric forms, seemingly so precise, are slightly off-kilter, as if drawn with a defective computer mouse.
This approach resonates with Roland Barthes’ idea of the “degree zero of writing”, except here, we face the degree zero of abstract painting. Connors deconstructs the codes of geometric abstraction not to destroy them but to reinvent them. He creates what I call “second-degree abstraction”—a painting that comments on its own history while creating something new.
His work is particularly fascinating in how it incorporates elements that seem to come straight out of digital drawing software. Those straight lines abruptly interrupted, overlapping shapes clumsily aligned—all of it evokes the early fumblings of a beginner on Photoshop. Yet that’s precisely his genius: transforming these digital “errors” into pictorial poetry.
There’s a palpable tension in his works between the handmade and the mechanical, the analog and the digital. This duality recalls Vilém Flusser’s reflections on technology and culture, where the artist becomes a player challenging the machine’s preprogrammed rules. Connors plays this game with biting irony, creating works that seem both programmed and deeply human.
The way he uses color is equally subversive. His palettes may initially seem arbitrary—garish yellows clash with deep blues, candy pinks collide with acidic greens. But there’s a logic to this apparent chromatic cacophony. Each color is chosen not for its intrinsic beauty but for its ability to create tension, a visual discomfort that forces us to look closer.
In Mural for a Gay Household I & II (2018-2020), he pushes this logic to its extreme. These massive vertical diptychs, with their perfectly executed checkerboard patterns, are brutally interrupted by central black splotches. It’s as if Connors is saying, “You thought this was just a modernist style exercise? Surprise!”
This approach echoes Lucy Lippard’s description of the “dematerialization of art”, except here, Connors works in reverse. He rematerializes abstraction, giving it a body, a physical presence that transcends the mere painted surface. His works are not windows to another world but objects resolutely existing in our space.
The influence of poetry on his work is evident, particularly in how he structures his compositions like visual free verse. It’s no coincidence he named his first exhibition after James Schuyler’s debut poetry collection, Freely Espousing. Like his paintings, poetry operates through juxtaposition, rupture, and surprise.
His approach to abstraction also evokes Susan Sontag’s theories on style. Just as Sontag argued for a direct experience of art rather than overinterpretation, Connors creates works that resist a single reading. They are there, provocatively simple in appearance yet rich in visual and conceptual complexities.
In his more recent works, such as those presented at Goldsmiths CCA in 2024, Connors pushes this logic of disruption further. He places his works in dialogue with those of other artists, creating what he calls “finding aids”—navigation tools for the overwhelming sea of visual references we encounter daily.
This curatorial approach reveals another facet of his practice: his ability to think of art as a relational system rather than a series of isolated objects. It’s what Nicolas Bourriaud might call “relational aesthetics”, but Connors goes further by forging connections that blur the boundaries between artist, curator, and viewer.
His work raises fundamental questions about the very nature of originality in art. In a world saturated with images, where every pictorial gesture seems to have already been made, Connors finds a new path by embracing that saturation rather than trying to transcend it. He creates what I’d call “post-original painting”—a practice that acknowledges its heritage while subverting it.
Critics accusing Connors of mere aesthetic recycling miss the point. His work is not a nostalgic celebration of modernism but a critical interrogation of the very possibility of abstract painting in the 21st century. As Arthur Danto wrote, we live in a “post-historical” art world where all styles are simultaneously available. Connors navigates this world with rare intelligence.
There’s something profoundly political in how he addresses the modernist legacy. By rejecting the formal purity beloved by modernists, by introducing deliberate “errors” and imperfections into his compositions, he democratizes abstraction. His works tell us that geometry doesn’t belong solely to Bauhaus masters and that color isn’t the exclusive property of abstract expressionists.
What makes his work so relevant today is that it creates a painting fully aware of its place in a digital world while insisting on its fundamentally analog nature. His works are not digital simulations translated into paint but objects bearing the traces of their handmade creation while engaging with our technological reality.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Connors is his ability to maintain a precarious balance between seriousness and play, reverence and irreverence. His works may seem nonchalant at first glance, but they conceal a profound reflection on the nature of painting and representation. As John Berger wrote, “seeing comes before words”—and Connors’ paintings teach us to see differently.
So yes, you bunch of snobs, Matt Connors may well be one of the most important painters of his generation—not because he reinvents the wheel but because he shows us that the wheel was never what we thought it was. In a world where art often feels trapped between commercial cynicism and intellectual pretension, his work offers a third way: painting that thinks while it plays, critiques while it creates, and respects its history while disrupting it.
