Matt McCormick was born in 1987. A multidisciplinary American artist, he lives and works between Los Angeles and New York. He first grew up in a family of artists, then studied at the Art Students League of New York in 2008. He spent part of his early adult years on the road. With bands, he toured across the United States and abroad. Motels, gas stations, deserts and ghost towns have fed his imagination ever since.
The practice of Matt McCormick spans painting, drawing, sculpture and mixed media. It draws on personal experience, popular culture, film and vernacular imagery. The visual language of everyday life inspires him too. Figures, landscapes, interiors, objects and fragments of text often appear stripped down or isolated. Taken out of context, they move between the personal, the symbolic and the familiar.
McCormick first gained recognition for his take on Americana and the mythology of the West. Cowboys, horses, pickup trucks, Coca-Cola bottles and cigarette packs fill his canvases. He sets these emblems of postwar America against contemporary reality. Rather than glorifying them, however, he questions the gap between the American Dream and lived experience. Romance, humor, melancholy, beauty, deterioration, aspiration and disappointment run through his work. His images are emotionally direct, yet resist a fixed interpretation.
His process combines digital tools with traditional techniques. Each composition is first developed on a computer. There he assembles and layers images and text, then paints by hand. Rather than a single subject, his work explores one question: how people understand themselves through images, places, objects and inherited ideas.
His first solo exhibition took place in New York in 2014, at The Good Company. Since then, his work has been shown in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Miami, Aspen and San Francisco. He exhibited at Cy Fiore in New York and Star Street in Hong Kong (2018). Gauthier Gallery in Los Angeles and New York later followed (2021–2023), then Just A Space in Paris and OMNI in London (2022). He also took part in group shows at the Long Beach Museum of Art and Beyond the Streets in Shanghai (2022). In 2025, he showed at Jeffrey Deitch in Miami. In 2016, Vogue Italia named him one of the rising stars of Los Angeles. Hypebeast, Highsnobiety and Clash have also covered his work.
In recent years, Matt McCormick has turned his focus to the digital age. He looks at how algorithms, social media and misinformation shape our beliefs. This is the subject of Faith, presented by Galerie Enrico Navarra at Villa Navarra in Le Muy in 2024. McCormick portrays those who build narratives online to bring order to an uncertain world. Thus, reality and legend blend. The exhibition is accompanied by a 128-page catalogue. In 2025, Galerie 75 Faubourg in Paris presented Running on Empty. In 2026, his shows include Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles and Ruttkowski;68 in New York.
Doriano Navarra is pleased to present the exhibition by American artist Matt McCormick: Running on Empty at Galerie 75 Faubourg from June 27 to August 1, 2025.
Doriano Navarra presents the exhibition Faith by American artist Matt McCormick, from July 13 to October 6, 2024, at Villa Navarra. Through this exhibition, McCormick explores the profound ramifications of our digital age, highlighting the subtle yet powerful influence of algorithms on our beliefs and attitudes.
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