MATTHEW SZÖSZ
Working primarily with glass, Matthew Szösz’ objects and video works are the result of performance-based experiments documenting a deep knowledge and unbridled desire to allow the material to lead him. Szösz describes his practice as “an attempt to maximize serendipity, and to allow a project to be guided by material and consequence, arriving, in the end, in an unfamiliar and unpredicted landscape. A successful project should not only be surprising but should also achieve an identity independent of the artist, and to at least some degree, escape his control and mastery.”
Matthew Szösz received his BA (1996) & BID (1997) and his MFA(Glass) (2007) from Rhode Island School of Design. He has been recognized internationally with awards including the Irvine Borowsky Prize, the Jutta-Cuny Franz Prize, and a Tiffany Foundation Grant, and has completed numerous residencies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Szösz has taught in the USA at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Washington, University of Hawai’i, Pilchuck Glass School, Penland School of Crafts and internationally at ASP Wrøcław, Amsterdam’s Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Bildwerk Frauenau and others, and has lectured and led workshops around the world. He is the founding member of the curatorial group Hyperopia Projects and was Executive Director of Public Glass, a non-profit public access studio in San Francisco. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in private collections and public institutions in the United States, Australia, Europe & Japan including at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, the Renwick Gallery/Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, the Toyama City Museum of Glass, Toyama, Japan and Het Glazenhuis, Lommel, Belgium.
