Matt Savitsky

Artist Bio

M A T T S A V I T S K Y , aka Minty (b. 1982), is a multidisciplinary performance artist who lives and works Los Angeles and whose often collaborative work combines performance, video, and sculptural installations.

Negotiating the physical, social, and ethical dimensions of relationships with collaborators is central to the staging and development of Savitsky’s projects. In group performances, he uses cameras and bodies to ask what it means to record the present moment. Although he uses many mediums, the central artistic act is that of collectively directing these creative sessions. Savitsky incorporates material play, theatrical props, and modular film sets that become important tools by which the group or partnership can express itself. He has explored these types of subject-object relations in projects involving BDSM roleplay, family members, performance collectives, and the queer arts community. In Mid-City Angels (2017), for example, he recontextualized poses from Greco-Roman sculptures within the tradition of queer performance, inviting Los Angeles-based collaborators to join him in remixing the Classical figure-support convention. In five hour-long, improvised sessions, Savitsky and his collaborators made and unmade sculptural forms, opening a dialogue about the relational and ongoing nature of identity construction.

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He received his MFA from UC San Diego in 2015 and his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2005. He is a recipient of the 2022 Grants to Artist Award from the Foundation of Contemporary Art in New York.

Savitsky has had solo exhibitions at Cloaca Projects, San Francisco, CA (2019) and Shoot the Lobster, Los Angeles, CA (2017), among others. He has participated in group exhibitions at the Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA (2019); The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2018); and Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA (2016). His video works have been screened in the Migrating Forms Film Festival, New York, NY (2010); at Galeria Alternativa Once, Monterrey, Mexico (2014); and at Universidad del Pais Vasco Bilbao, Leioa, Spain (2014). Savitsky has performed at the Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana, CA (2019); The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (2018); New Art Dealers Alliance, New York, NY (2017); and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA (2016).

Savitsky has attended residencies hosted by Kembra Pfahler’s Incarnata Social Club, Reno, NV (2016) and by La Pocha Nostra at Highways, Los Angeles, CA (2016) and Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, Mexico (2016).

Savitsky was a member of The Family Room collective, an interdisciplinary group whose other members included Todd Moellenberg and Sylke Rene Meyer. They have created and shown work at Northridge Art Galleries, Los Angeles, CA (2019); California State University, Los Angeles, CA (2019); and Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles, CA (2019).

Savitsky lectures on Film & Video and Photographic Practices at California State University, Fullerton and California State University, Long Beach.

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Portrait by Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

Photograph of Matt Savitsky