Matthew Kirk | All of Us. Both of Us.

Kirk forges intuitive and diaristic connections with and between disparate found materials gathered on daily routes between his home, studio, and elsewhere. All of Us. Both of Us. relays the playful and critical potency of Kirk’s assemblage practice, debuting nine new paintings and sculptures, including his first mobile. The exhibition commingles traces of the artist’s recreational time, from memories of his own childhood to an active life with his family. Arrows, rope, BBs, a garbage rifle, a basketball hoop, shuttlecocks and a range of balls are deftly incorporated across the works. Construction and packing materials known to his practice are also present. Wooden fence posts infer feathers and fish; plastic zip ties and metal clamps adorn a shield-like form pierced with darts thrown by his children. Sundrenched dropcloths archive rural summers making other works; their layered lines and outlines become paintings stretched over zigzag-edged forms. All of Us. Both of Us. reflects on how time spent doing what we love with who we love can be the technologies of resistance that can seed and nurture vitality in current times. Throughout the exhibition, watchful figures in both human and more-than-human guises remind us that there have always been and will always be protectors. 

About the Artist:
Matthew Kirk (Navajo) was born in 1978 in Ganado, AZ, and spent most of his youth in Racine, WI. He has lived and worked in New York City for nearly two decades and is currently based in Queens. He is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. 

Kirk's recent group exhibitions include Smoke in Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY (2025); The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, Brooklyn Museum, NY (2024); Summer Gathering, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2024), Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2023); The House Edge, The 8th Floor, New York City, NY (2023); and Inheritances: material and otherwise, Discover Focus, The Armory Show, New York City, NY (2023). Recent solo gallery exhibitions include with de boer, Los Angeles, CA, and Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY. Kirk's work is collected by the Eiteijorg Museum, the Gochman Family Collection, Forge Collection, Everson Museum, and others. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Contemporary Native American Art.

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday through Saturday, Noon to 5:00 pm

Image: Matthew Kirk, Both of Us Lonely., canvas, spray paint, acid-free paste, matte medium, and upholstery tacks on MDF, 42.25 x 66 inches.
Courtesy the artist. Photo by Paul Terrie.