Matthew Clay-Robison is an artist and curator whose practice-based research project, “Multiplicity: Visual Art as an Agent of Intercultural Understanding,” seeks to create a visual discourse between contemporary artists in the United States and Indonesia through print trade portfolios and exhibitions. His research period is from June to November 2023.
Based in Yogyakarta, Matthew is working on his project with guidance from Nano Warsono, Director of the R.J. Katamsi Gallery at the Indonesia Institute of the Arts (ISI Yogyakarta.) This project will examine visual art’s capacity for communicating shared experiences, emotions, and recognized truths that reaches beyond the limitation of words, particularly in the absence of a common spoken language. This research is particularly interested in the medium of printmaking and how the process of printing multiples enables artists to engage in a visual dialogue that each participant owns and can share with others. This research also considers the educational impact of exhibitions and what it means to curate a survey exhibition of contemporary art in a country as varied and diverse as Indonesia.
Selected as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in 2020, Matthew’s research was delayed by the global pandemic, however in the last three years he has organized exhibitions by Indonesian artists Entang Wiharso and the collective Taring Padi at his home institution, York College of Pennsylvania and co-curated an exhibition by Mohamad ‘Ucup’ Yusuf at Carroll Community College in Westminster, MD. Additional research was conducted last summer at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany where he spent time with artists from the Indonesian collectives ruangrupa, Taring Padi, and Jatiwangi Art Factory.
Matthew Clay-Robison is gallery director at York College of Pennsylvania. He has a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Connecticut and an master of fine arts from the University of Maryland. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. He has received numerous awards, including Best in Show at National Juried Exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia and Foundry Gallery in Washington, DC and his work is in several public and private collections, including the David C. Driskell Center and the Library of Congress, who acquired his woodcut White, Hot Rage (Home-Grown Demagogue) that was also described and discussed by NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. He was awarded Creative York’s 2017 Educator of the Year for bringing challenging, thought-provoking exhibitions by artists with international reputations to York, PA. In 2020, he was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar.
