We are pleased to present Skinnin’ the game, the first solo exhibition by Matthew Kirk (b. 1978, Ganado, Arizona) since he joined the gallery’s roster in 2025. The New York-based artist presents three bodies of work, including new paintings, sculptures and a collaborative installation.

Kirk, who is of Diné (Navajo) and European descent, is known for his mixed-media work inspired by his urban environment as well as Diné motifs found in textiles. In 2024, Kirk was a featured artist in the Brooklyn Museum’s The Brooklyn artists exhibition and in 2025, his work was included in the Hudson River Museum’s Smoke in our hair: native memory and unsettled time, a New York times critic’s pick. Kirk’s work is in the collection of the Forge Project in Taghkanic, New York, among others.

A self-taught artist, Kirk employs a wide range of media and techniques. His innovative use of non-traditional materials includes building supplies—Sheetrock, plywood, insulation foam and roofing paper. Kirk favors these materials because of their ubiquity and ready-made qualities, which allow him to work more efficiently in the studio. They are also familiar to him. After settling in New York in 2006, Kirk supported himself as an art handler for almost a decade. It was a job that suited him, not only because of its proximity to the art world but also because it indulged his passion for building things.

Kirk’s pragmatism is part of a holistic approach to resources—an economy of materials, energy and time. It informs even his choice of paint colors, which he uses straight from the tube instead of mixing different hues to create something new. In the studio, he avoids waste so rigorously that bits of discarded wood, metal, feathers or objects collected off the street will, years later, find their way into his work. This ethos echoes the nose-to-tail hunting and consumption practices found in many Indigenous communities, which use every part of an animal out of respect for both the animal and the environment.

Practicality, however, is not the whole story. Kirk sees potential in these materials and he’s at his most creative when finding new ways to repurpose them. He has respect for the creators of these humble building supplies and for the labor and ingenuity that brought them into existence. From his colorful mixed-media assemblages to his painterly compositions replete with distinctive motifs, Kirk uses these materials to create work that evokes memories of his childhood, daily life and time spent with his children. His paintings and sculptures are reflections of how he sees himself and the world around him. Through this aesthetic language, Kirk explores the intersection of his Indigenous and Euro-American heritage and positions himself in respect to both.