Matt Connors Mysterious Leap

The paintings in Mysterious Leap draw inspiration from a diverse array of sources, ranging from Clarice Cliff pottery and the cover of 1964 US edition of Paul Valéry’s Monsieur Teste (1896) to everyday observations—a window, a kite caught in a tree, floor tiles, and a child’s toy. Valéry’s Teste offers an interesting parallel to Freud, as its protagonist devotes his life to examining his own thoughts, in pursuit of pure consciousness. The book’s experimental, fragmented and nonlinear style defies the conventions of the traditional novel. Similarly, at the core of Connors’ practice is the challenge of translating an idea or a fragment of reality into paint. Rather than aiming for faithful reproduction, he uses source material as a catalyst for generating something entirely new. His process relies on visual ‘systems’—shifts in scale and perspective, replication, mirroring, inversion, tonal and chromatic transformations, layered compositions, distortion and disruption. Geometric shapes and recurring motifs—circles, squares, tiles—along with rhythmic and sequential arrangements, function as both structuring and destabilising forces. Ultimately, the resulting image asserts its own reality, independent of its origins.

This interplay between structure and openness reveals the poetic undercurrent of Connors’ work. The autonomy of the image and its ability to generate its own meaning parallel the nature of poetry—a term derived from the Greek poēsis, meaning ‘making’—where the aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language evoke meanings beyond the literal or superficial. A similar dynamic emerges in Connors’ work, each composition exuding a sense of openness, suggesting that every painting contains an element of possibility, inviting simultaneous interpretations and leaving room for continuous transformation.

¹Der rätselhafte Sprung von Seelischen zum Körperlichen.

Matt Connors (b. 1973, Chicago) lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. He was included in the 2022 edition of the Whitney Biennial, Quiet as It's Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Other institutional exhibitions include: Goldsmith CCA, London (2024); Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee (2023); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2022); Lismore Castle, Waterford, Ireland (2022); Le Consortium, Dijon (2018); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2015); MoMA, New York (2014); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2013). In 2015, Matt Connors was a resident at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. In 2012, he published the award-winning book A Bell is a Cup.