Matthew Kirk ‘In a Time of Darkness, This is Wonderful News

Matthew Kirk (b. 1978) was born in Ganado, AZ, and grew up in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan. Kirk, who is of Diné (Navajo) and European descent, is a New York-based artist known for his mixed-media work inspired by Diné motifs found in textiles as well as his urban environment. His three-dimensional constructions are replete with distinctive motifs configured on what the artist calls tiles. Kirk employs his own pictorial language of elemental signs—arrows suggesting moving and force, concentric circles and squares, and celestial, human, and animal forms—to explore the intersection of his Indigenous and Euro-American heritage and position himself in respect to both. 

Kirk has had solo exhibitions at de boer, Los Angeles, CA; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; FIERMAN, New York, NY; Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Makasini Contemporary, Turku, Finland; and Louis B. James Gallery, New York, NY. Group exhibitions include those at Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York; Sundaram Tagore, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York, New Paltz; Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN; de boer, Antwerp, BE; and Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY. His work is included in the public collections of the  Eiteijorg Museum, Indianapolis, IN; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; The Forge Collection, Taghanic, NY; Meta, New York, NY; TD Bank Collection, Toronto, Canada; and Bank of America Collection, New York, NY. His works have been published in The New York Times, ARTnews, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2019, Kirk was the recipient of the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Contemporary Native American Art.