Landon Metz

Landon Metz (b.1985, Phoenix, Arizona) is a New York-based contemporary artist whose practice explores painting as a meditative activity: “I’m totally invested in the possibility that one can be present in the world with curiosity, openness and awareness. Just looking, and allowing something to be what it is, can be incredibly enriching. I use my practice as a kind of tool for magnification”.

In recent years Metz has garnered positive critical attention for his ability to imbue the spare language of abstraction with dynamism and movement. Strategies of display are central to Metz’s visual language, which often incorporates the vocabulary of sculpture and installation. As a result, Metz’s site-responsive paintings – they frequently abut one another, reach into or wrap around corners – have the capacity to expand and contract space.

Compositionally, Metz often repeats his organic forms across the canvas so that they evoke a sense of rhythm and flow. To create these forms Metz paints thin washes of acrylic dye onto raw canvas; soaking up dye, they are saturated with deep colour at their edges, lighter and fluid in the middle. Often they stretch beyond the margin of the canvas, hinting at the space beyond.

Metz’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Norway, Italy, Denmark and Canada. In 2014, he was 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 exhibition blue. at Nassau County Museum of Art in New York, and Greffes, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto at Villa Medici in Rome.

Metz lives and works in Manhattan, New York.