Matthew Craven

Matthew Craven is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. Combining found images from archival sources that reference humanity's visual history with his hand-drawn patterns and illustrations, Craven's works on paper create a new handmade universe of past, future, and present commonalities. Photographs of archaeological remains and the natural world are overlaid on colorful textiles or florals drawn on the back of vintage movie posters, creating a hypnotic vernacular that points to the wholeness of human history. In re-contextualizing visual symbols from different cultures and periods that symbolize creation stories from the Garden of Eden to the Big Bang, Craven intervenes in preconceived notions of history's objects as fixed in time and place. The elements of visual culture that tell the age-old story of human experience are not part of a static archive built upon through discovery, but ingredients in a melting pot of global influence beyond time.

Craven has exhibited at institutions across North America and Europe. He received his BFA from Michigan State University, East Lansing, and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.