MATTHEW KIRK

CATCH AND RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 3 - OCTOBER 18, 2025

FIERMAN presents Catch and Release, a solo exhibition by Matthew Kirk, his fourth with the gallery.  Kirk is known for his ingenious use of non-traditional art making materials in service of spirited assemblages that fuse contemporary urban experience with imagery of the artist’s Navajo heritage. Discarded sheetrock stands in for animal hide; industrial fencing and art-handling straps morph into tongue in cheek traditional weaving. Catch and Release is comprised of new grid paintings, quilted compositions of small squares of wood, masonite, leather, canvas, and other salvaged materials swimming with oil stick renderings of birds, riffs on minimalist paintings, and imagined landscapes.  Freestanding and wall-mounted sculptures interpolate the installation; Kirk’s anthropomorphic fusions of deconstructed basketballs, tree stumps, scraps of fabric and other odds and ends tacitly interrogate the viewer. 

Kirk’s deft hands infuse industrial detritus with visual poetry and emotional pathos. His use of material is both ad hoc and personal, as remnants from projects artistic and domestic catalogue a moment in the artist’s life and mind. Wooden shingles from a home renovation project add angles of intrigue to the gridded compositions. Kirk’s grids evolved out of his weavings, and without the metal superstructure they assume a new levity and sophistication.

Catch and Release, both the exhibition's title and an elegant construction comprised of slickly painted wood, spray painted fencing slats, and a dowel shaped into an arrow, is a distillation of the artist’s philosophy and sense of humor.  It is a neo-pop cyclops in a party dress, a segmented arrow hinged below, swinging in static, unable to perform its literal or symbolic function.  Catch and Release is Kirk’s response to the present moment culturally, compositionally, and personally; the materials, experiences and forms alight like birds on branches, only partially encumbered by their own histories, futures undetermined.

 Matthew Kirk (b. 1978) was born in Ganado, AZ of Diné (Navajo) and European descent, lives and works in Queens, NY.  Kirk has a concurrent  solo exhibition at de boer, Los Angeles, opening September 13, and has exhibited at Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, 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.