Matthew Angelo Harrison

Matthew Angelo Harrison (born 1989) is an American artist living and working in Detroit, MI. His work investigates analog and digital technologies to explore ancestry, authenticity, and the relationship between African culture and African-American culture.

Life and work Harrison was born in Detroit, Michigan, where he currently lives and works. After earning a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012, Harrison worked at Ford Motor Company prototyping clay models for cars and car parts. His past work with machinery and industrial design continues to inform and inspire his artistic process today.

Bodies of Work

In his "Dark Silhouettes" series, Harrison “encapsulates” dissections of African tribal sculptures in subtly tinted resin blocks. Some of the figures, heads and masks come from Makonde and Dogon tribes while others are of unknown origin. Harrison then slices through or burrows holes, with a CNC router, into some of the blocks producing unique forms and evoking diverse places and times.

In his “Dark Povera” series, Harrison scans African artifacts and then reproduces them with his homemade low-resolution 3D printers. In contrast to most 3D printers, which print with silicone and other strong synthetic plastics, Harrison’s hand-made printers utilize a wet clay, creating a finished product that is an imperfect, abstracted reproduction of the original artifact. Dark Povera Part 1, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA, 2017 'Prototype of Dark Silhouettes, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2018

Group exhibitions

Ever get the feeling we’re not alone in this world?, What Pipeline, Detroit, MI, 2016 The Politics of Portraiture, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2016 Take Me (I’m Yours), curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jens Hoffmann and Kelly Taxter, Jewish Museum, New York, NY, 2016 Eric Schmid is an Idiot, curated by What Pipeline, CAVE Detroit, MI, 2017 Sonic Rebellion: Music as Resistance, MOCAD, Detroit, MI, 2017 Fictions, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, 2017 The Everywhere Studio, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, 2017 Songs for Sabotage, New Museum Triennial, New Museum, New York, NY, 2018 At Large Part 2, Reyes Projects, Detroit, MI, 2018 I Was Raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2018 Kinship, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2018 Uncanny Valley, De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, 2019 Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality, Cranbrook Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, 2019 Colored People Time: Quotidian Pasts, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2019

Public collections

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI Galeries Lafayette Foundation - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin, Paris de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL Kadist, San Francisco/Paris Rennie Collection, Vancouver, B.C.