Matthew Cusick’s work involves the excavation, intervention, and reconstruction of remnants from the past, which he then employs as a surrogate for paint. Using collage as his primary medium, he meticulously cuts and inlays fragments of maps and other repurposed material into the picture plane. By contextualizing the historical narratives of the printed ephemera he selects for each piece, Cusick’s work resonates with a seamless yet densely layered representation of his emblematic subject matter. He allows his work be guided by his various materials: maps, atlases, encyclopedias and school textbooks. “I like to catalog, archive, and arrange information and then dismantle, manipulate, and reconfigure it. I use maps as a surrogate for paint and as a way to expand the limits of representational painting.”

Cusick received a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1993 and a MFA in 2013 from Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts. He was the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, an Art Residency Fellowship at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, and a LUX Art Institute residency. Since 1992, the artist’s work has been written about extensively in publications such as Art in America, Boston Sunday Globe, Glasstire.com, National Public Radio, Semigloss Magazine, The Dallas Morning News, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, and Vanity Fair. The artist currently resides in Dallas.