Details:
① Artwork:
Ghost Cumming (Black and White)
Lifson’s recent series of small paintings capture figures from horror films and gay pornography, all drawn from paused VHS frames that have been recorded and re-recorded until the images blur into a hazy, spectral state. These figures—forever caught in moments of climax or action—emerge as haunting, ghost-like presences suspended in transition, evoking memories excavated from the past or bodies lingering in a liminal space.
By layering references from art, life, slasher films, and queer media, Matt Lifson explores the provocative intersections of psychosexual imagery and media’s role in shaping identity. Each piece emulates the interlaced scan lines of re-recorded videotape, with forms pushed to the edge of legibility, underscoring the eroding effect of modern media on memory and experience. Lifson’s deeply personal approach creates a phantom structure that intertwines queer temporalities and anachronisms, weaving a rhythmic portrayal of lived experience that resonates between visibility and obscurity.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Matt Lifson is a painter whose work investigates the relationship between lived and borrowed experiences concerning queer identity. His studio practice employs various techniques, from the immediacy of impressionist mark-making to the layering of contradictory images evocative of early surrealism. Although referential to erotic tableaus, Lifson aims to excavate greater humanity through provocative figure compositions, exploring his personal narratives while critiquing myths of sensationalized queer relationships in media.
Matt Lifson was born in 1985 in New York, NY, and lives in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his MFA at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles, CA, and his BA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY.
He has mounted solo exhibitions at NOON Projects in Los Angeles, CA (2023, 2022); RDFA in Los Angeles, CA (2022); CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2018); ACME in Los Angeles, CA (2016, 2015); and Angles Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2013).
His work has been included in group shows at Vardan Gallery in Los Angeles, CA (2023); Eve Leibe Gallery in London, UK (2023); RDFA in Los Angeles, CA (2021); Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, CA (2020); Big Pictures LA in Los Angeles, CA (2019); 1969 Gallery in New York, NY (2018); and elsewhere.
Lifson’s work has been featured in publications like the Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, and Beverly Hills Times Magazine.
He was the recipient of a 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant.
