A Studio Visit with Landon Metz (IRL)

New York-based artist Landon Metz (American, b. 1985) has garnered critical attention for his ability to imbue a spare language of abstraction with visual dynamism and sense of movement. His paintings have the capacity to expand and deal with space serially, while being site-responsive rather than site-specific. Metz’s painting practice is marked by great sensitivity to site and scale and increasingly incorporates performance and sculptural approaches to activate space.

Strategies of display are central to Metz’s visual language and his installations often incorporate elements of rhythm and repetition. Frequently in his work multi-panel paintings are presented as diptychs and triptychs, which he sometimes installs abutting one another, reaching into or wrapping around corners. He also produces shaped canvases that mimic the abstract shapes that appear in his other paintings. As Metz has observed, “My practice is largely about breaking down polarities, and I think that’s apparent in the way I present space. It’s about negotiating between setting and subject, public and private.”

Metz’s work has appeared in solo exhibitions in Norway, Italy, Denmark and Canada. In 2014, he was the artist in residence at the ADN Collection in Bolzano, Italy. In 2018, Metz was the subject of a solo exhibition at Museo Pietro Canonica in Rome. Metz was recently featured in the group exhibitions Blue., at The Nassau County Museum of Art In New York, and Greffes, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto at Villa Medici in Rome. Metz was born in Phoenix, Arizona and currently lives and works in New York.

In 2023, Metz’s work will be the subject of solo exhibitions at Gana Art, Seoul, KR; and von Bartha, Basel, CH.

His debut album, Six Days At The Orange House, will be released on May 26th, by Sensative Records, Copenhagen.