Matthew Brandt: Sky/ Surface

Matthew Brandt’s Sky/Surface series presents modern frescoes of Los Angeles landscapes as an homage to his hometown. The fractured images prominently feature highways, sunsets and palm trees: the elements that define the city’s visual identity. Drawing inspiration from the 19th-century tradition of landscape photography, which sought to document and romanticize the American landscape, Brandt reinterprets this legacy by embedding physical elements of the concrete landscape into his work. Each piece becomes both a visual and material representation of L.A., merging place, memory, and process into a contemporary meditation on image-making.

Using a contemporary fresco technique, Brandt transfers pigment from inkjet prints onto wet plaster, fusing the image permanently onto the cement surface. This approach, historically utilized for its longevity and architectural significance, mimics the layered construction of urban environments like L.A.’s sprawling freeways.

The frescoes are imbued with personal memory, recalling Brandt’s own childhood in Los Angeles. Their worn textures and muted tones speak to the passage of time, while soft sunsets and faded palms evoke a collective nostalgia. More than mere depictions, these works are tactile elegies to a city both lived and imagined where material, memory, and myth intertwine.

Work by Matthew Brandt is in the permanent collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Art Gallery of South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Cincinnati Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Royal Danish Library, National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; and the Columbus Museum of Art, among others. Brandt was born in California in 1982, received his BFA from The Cooper Union in New York and his MFA from UCLA. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.