Matt Magee, artist, Phoenix
Moderated by George T. M. Shackelford, deputy director
What does the art of the past mean to the artist of the present? In this ongoing program, moderated by Kimbell staff, artists and architects discuss works in the museum’s collection, share the special insights of the practicing professional, and relate older art to contemporary artistic concerns, including their own. The program is free and requires no reservations.
Matt Magee moved to Arizona in 2012, after 30 years living in New York City, where he pursued an MFA at Pratt Institute and managed the lower Manhattan studio of the painter Robert Rauschenberg. Magee has what one author has described as an “omnivorous practice.” His practice is varied in what he himself makes—whether in painting, printmaking, paper making, sculpture, or photography—and in what he uses as materials—including, for example, such non-traditional supplies as aluminum cans, detergent bottles, plastic bags, mica, scraps of tires, or rubber inner tubes. Working with his hands to craft the work of art, he nonetheless emphasizes accumulative iterative processes like stacking, repetition, and sequencing, giving his sculptures, prints, and paintings an imbedded language and personal history.
