Artist Research

 Matt Lipps

Matt Lipps is a Californian artist that has a very particular way to portray his art. His colorful photographs of cutout images bring a different appreciation of photographic art. Matt Lipps was born in northern California in 1975. He received his B.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach and his M.F.A.  in studio art from the University of California, Irvine, in 2004. The Horizon/s series is one of my favorite compilations of Lipps’ art.

For HORIZON/S, Lipps pulled from the first 10 years of Horizon Magazine, a bi-monthly hardback arts journal first published in September 1958. The magazine’s inaugural issue sets up a general invitation to the American people to join the editors of the magazine on a voyage towards an imagined “horizon” of high art and culture – examining artifacts, architecture, theater & film actors, and serving up what would be fine “taste” for those who weren’t in the know – a relatively antiquated way of thinking about art objects.

Lipps used Horizon magazine image cutouts; he arranged the images flat to the camera and photographed them. His work is ultimately exhibited as photography but the process is rich in various artistic aspects. 

The majority of Lipps’ work involves sculpture, collage, and theater staging on a small scale with a cast of paper dolls that he cuts out and props up with supports so that they may stand on their own.

The process starts with choosing the images, then it moves to sculpture because the 2D cutout become somewhat 3D because he makes them stand in a “set”, then Lipps uses shadows, lighting, colors, shapes and space to bring his work alive, and finally he uses theater tools to finalize his scenes.

I like how Lipps is able to bring 2D images into our space, they become vivid and they tell a story. His work brings an optical allusion and re-portraits objects, animals and people.

I’m excited to visit the MOPA this Saturday to see the Staking Claims exhibition and see some of Matt Lipps’ contributions to the exhibit.