Matt Rich

Ampersand, 2025
7744 Fay Avenue

15' 9" x 11' 7"

Matt Rich’s mural, Ampersand, is an energetic collage of materials, forms, and colors that reflects the formal and conceptual threads of his practice, where elements converge and intertwine to reveal new relationships and possibilities. Rich’s use of the & character emerges as a signature motif, serving as both a visual anchor and a symbolic gesture toward openness, continuation, and exchange. The looping form guides the viewer's eye through the piece, with one end reaching upward and the other extending down to the right, acting as pathways in and out of the piece. Rich’s vibrant mural transforms a familiar yet busy pedestrian walkway into a site of play and connection. 

Tactility is central to Rich’s practice, as he assembles a variety of materials, combining canvases of different thicknesses and weaves, pastel and gouache and spray paint on paper, and crumpled tin foil, into layered collages. In Ampersand, that sense of texture and material presence is carried forward at mural scale, retaining the layered richness of the original mixed-media composition. As an additional complexity, Rich embeds a photograph of the surrounding wall into the composition, creating a “peekaboo” section inside the bottom loop that suggests the viewer can see through the image to the actual wall, blurring the boundary between artwork and site. To extend this idea, he incorporates an embossed and painted background that echoes and reimagines the surrounding stucco texture. These material moves encourage a boundary-blurring conversation between the work, the architectural and spatial context, and the movement of those who encounter it. 

Rich’s ongoing practice combines two- and three-dimensional materials as a means to expand the language of painting and methods of display. The various techniques that Rich uses to configure painted canvas—as drapery, affixed to pedestals, or stretched as wallpaper—reimagine and multiply the ways in which these surfaces inhabit space. In addition to his individual practice, he maintains a collaborative studio practice with Victoria Fu. 

Rich was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He received a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and went on to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His wide-ranging investigation of two-dimensional media alongside and as part of social and participatory practices seeks new ways to engage with diverse contexts and audiences.

Rich has shown his work in many notable institutions, including solo exhibitions with the Timken Museum of Art and Southwestern College Art Gallery in San Diego and the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; San Diego International Airport; Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio; MIT List Art Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. His work has been featured in publications such as Modern Painters, Artforum, Art Papers, The Boston Globe, and The San Diego Union-Tribune, and he has received grants from the Howard Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Terra Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Rich is an Associate Professor at the University of San Diego, and he lives and works in San Diego.