AUGUST 2008: DC:

"Made in China" at the Longview Gallery in Washington, DC a two-person show with dana ellyn. both will be displaying paintings created while in China the previous month.
THRU SEPT 20TH... BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION/2ND OPENING SEPTEMBER 10TH 6-8PM
CLICK HERE to see PRESS REVIEWS/RELEASE
CLICK HERE to visit Long View Gallery

SEPTEMBER 2008: DC:

"Arts on Foot" / "Adams Morgan Day Washington, DC Matt Sesow will be selling hundreds of his paintings on the 13th and 14th of september in DC
Arts on Foot website
Adams Morgan Day, Arts on Belmont website

JULY 2008: CHINA:

Matt will be spending the month of July at various locations in China. the website will be updated with paintings created from China. (Beijing, Shanghai, Yichang, Three Gorges, Wanxian, Fuling, Chongqing, Xian, Guilin, Hong Kong).

JULY 3 - SEPTEMBER 8 2008: HAMPTONS, NEW YORK:

"3rd Annual Outsider Art in the Hamptons" at Galerie Belage
Matt Sesow has around 15 works in this exhibit, including one 12' x 7' canvas from Giovanni opera painting (raleigh, nc 2006)
Insiders among Outsider artists will have their say about what Outsider Art is and isn't on July 3, when Gallery BelAge hosts a two-pronged exhibit, "The 3rd Annual Outsider Art in the Hamptons: Internal Guidance Systems Exhibition." Curators Candyce Brokaw, an outsider artist and founder of Survivors Art Foundation joins Anne Grgrich and Colin Rhodes of "Internal Guidance Systems," a traveling exhibition touring the United States and Canada through 2010; together they shed light on this hot but frequently misunderstood art movement. Drawing upon an international pool of artists from Quogue to Australia, the curators have painstakingly culled more than three hundred works of art in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, multi-media sculpture, collage, and poetry. All the works are by artists inspired by their own, private worlds, unfettered by the "isms" that drive mainstream contemporary art.
CLICK HERE to visit Galerie Belage

June 7 - July 13 2008: NEW YORK:

"Outside In" group show at Gaga Arts Center
Matt Sesow will have several works on display, for sale at this annual event in Garnerville.
This is the second year that GAGA will be featuring outsider art. Over fifteen thousand square of gallery space will be made available. "It’s just a natural fit for GAGA. People loved last year's Outside In show, so we are making it even bigger and better for 2008.”says Executive Director James Tyler. The paintings and sculpture of fifty self-taught ‘outsiders’ and American folk artists will be on display at the GAGA Arts Center as a part of this year’s GAGA Arts Festival. Exhibition will include new works by: Matt Sesow, Bob Justin, Mike Conner, Ed Kirkland, Ross Brodar, and many others. This year GAGA is being joined by HAI of New York City.
CLICK HERE to read the press release/webpage
CLICK HERE to read REVIEW of the show ("lower hudson journal news")

MAY 17 - JULY 1 2008: HAMPTONS, NEW YORK:

"Breaking the Walls of Bias: Art by Survivors" at Galerie Belage
Features art by individuals who have found their way out of life's darkest moments including physical and mental disabilities, racism, war and trauma. It is a joyous exhibition that amasses works by artists, emerging and well known, from around the world.
Curated by Candyce Brokaw, founder and Executive Director of Survivors Art Foundation, and Robert Deets, director of Galerie BelAge in Westhampton Beach, the show includes over 100 paintings, sculpture, multi-media and video works by artists of every age and social circumstance.
CLICK HERE to read the press release
CLICK HERE to visit Galerie Belage

MAY 2008, ongoing: BEAT MUSEUM, SAN FRANCISCO:

BUKOWSKI UNDIGESTED BOOK of poetry by Linda King, illustrated by Matt Sesow on sale and display at the Beat Museum. Original paintings from the book on sale as well as signed poems by King.
CLICK HERE to order and see more about the book...
CLICK HERE for info on Beat Museum

MAY 9 -JUNE 15 2008: ARTOMATIC, DC:

Sesow display on the 8th Floor. 1,000 artists one building ... OPENING MAY 9TH.... 1200 First Street, NE
Matt has around 50 paintings on display, including a digital frame displaying around 5,000 works by Matt Sesow.
CLICK HERE to visit the artomatic site

Call or write/email in advance to setup a studio visit if interested (Washington, DC).

"Sesow's canvases would hardly complement floral-print furniture. But the personality behind the art is anything but dark. A polite, affable man with bright blue eyes and closely cropped blond hair, Sesow chuckles often and appears to be enjoying life. "
-- ( Molly Knight, DC Style Magazine, January/Feb. 2006)

"Matt Sesow's "Father of the Bride" threatens to steal the show with its irrepressible expressionistic angst. This 2001 acrylic painting on cardboard is defined by the remarkable violence of its brush strokes, which recall the kinetic force of Jack the Ripper with their razor-sharp slashes and blade-like shredding effect. These kinetic linear forms combine to create a grotesque portrait of an imposing man in a blue blazer and orange tie, dried white mounds of paint forming his monstrous teeth."
-- ( Allison Hersh, the Savannah Morning News, December 2005 ... Hurn Museum exhibit "Face Dances")

"While some of his images might be considered brutal or brutish in the same way as, say, Francis Bacon, they are only real life with the beauty secrets stripped away, the cover girl make-up stuffed back into society's compacts. They are the skeletons, out of the closet, with the raw meat still attached. Sesow may very well be the most important artist working today. His paintings are explosions of color. Punk rock energy paired with the symbolism of alienation dressed in the finery of a rainbow. As he says, he is trying to create something that is funny, political and chaotic. In that quest he has been successful on a grand scale. "
-- (Ron Taylor, Demon Beach Records, November 2005)

"Matt's work still bites big holes in the canvas and the sanctified social order of the day. Only now there is a greater confidence, with a higher level of sophistication in color and composition. ... drives ideas like nails through current events. Whatever the theme, manages to steeer clear of illustration and drill (his) way to the inner core of fearless, almost reckless interpretation."
-- (Jim Magner, Capitol Hill Rag Magazine, March 2005)

"Matt Sesow ... is a master of angular lines and jarring color."
-- (J. Bowers, Baltimore City Paper, oct. 2004)

WON BEST EXPERIMENTAL THEATER (June 2005): "Collateral Damage," Cheap Theatrix: Raymond Shurtz collected a handful of antiwar plays and strung them together against a painting by Washington, D.C., artist Matt Sesow. Somewhat thoughtprovoking, occasionally brilliant, entirely fresh."
-- (Chris Page, critic, East Valley Tribune Daily, June 2005)

"Matt Sesow's nightmarish portraits possess a voracious brutality that hits the eyes like sand, but embed in the heart with unexpected wonder"
-- (Timothy Cahill, Albany New York Times Union, 2004)

"Sesow didn't have any formal art training, but his work is gaining recognition in the small but growing world of so-called visionary art. The genre -- sometimes called outsider art, art brut or contemporary folk art -- groups works by self-trained artists who deal with very personal issues, often their own disabilities... Through his art, Sesow worked through the emotional knots created by his childhood accident.... Sesow's paintings communicate the emotional power of his healing. One of his works in the AVAM exhibit, titled "Out of Water," depicts in loose, abstracted brush strokes and bright colors a scuba diver emerging from water. On his goggles is a line with three crosses that Sesow uses to symbolize the trauma of his childhood accident. For years after his hand was amputated Sesow wore prosthetics, but about a year after he started painting, he gained confidence and stopped wearing his artificial hand. Sesow feels freed now that he doesn't have to try to be and look like something he isn't. ..."
-- (Cate Hescox, Reuters News, October 2004 read full interview by clicking here)

"Sesow's explosively colored and powerfuly composed expressionist paintings in this exhibition are broad brushed self-portraits with a compellingly dramatic tension that draws in the viewer. Both 'Setting Sail' and 'Out of Water' capture on canvas and board doubling figures, expressions, and markings-- on the first-- and a powerful head complete with a characteristic Sesow trauma scar marker on the second..."
-- (Tony Harvey... regarding Sesow paintings at 'Holy H2O' AVAM show, Intowner magazine, Washington DC, Oct. 2004)

"Every stroke (of Sesow's) is like a cannonball hitting the canvas"
--(Chris Warner/Alcove Gallery, Atlanta Magazine, 2004)

"Matt Sesow, whose "Bunny Collector" could hold its own with Grosz, and whose "Hellbound III" posits a universe where Francis Bacon and Edvard Munch are the same."
-- (Las Vegas Mercury, 2003)

"The essential appeal of the outsider spirit in art is robustly exemplified by the compelling impact of a Matt Sesow painting. His finest works tend to gather themselves to lunge at you and take root in unguarded channels of emotion"
--(New Art International, Book Art Press. 2003)

(Regarding paintings done by Sesow for the Hollywood play 'F**king Wasps' about Alfred Kinsey, by Steve Haskell) "The set consisted essentially of a blue piano and several immense paintings by DC-based artist Matt Sesow, which were commissioned by the director for the production. These complex, savage, allegorical portraits not only represented but actually contained the entire psychological subtext of the play. Their vivid, unsettling presence gave the rigid agony of the performances a context and a dignity that despite their best intentions they might not have achieved otherwise. The art was there to say no, that despite the defenses, controls and masks, inside everyone there is a mass of turmoil and contradiction. The paintings were an integral part of the content of the production, not just its style. The said more about the Kinsey the man than Kinswy ever could. That is exactly what I was looking for at the LA Art show, what I look for all the time now. For art that takes the human condition seriously, and engages with it, even at great risk to itself."
-- (Coagula Magazine, Hollywood, CA, 2003. Shana Nys Dambrot)

"Brace yourself. Maybe even toss back a stiff drink before you go. Because to encounter Matt Sesow's paintings is to enter a maelstrom. Undiluted primary colors fly off the wall, blinding, dazzling. Frenetic lines thrash violently. And Sesow's disturbing, distorted images needle and jab.... Viewing the current wall of Sesow's work is like eavesdropping on the artist's ongoing argument with the world. With paint he shouts down and wrestles with his tangled personal and political issues. And we get to watch wide-eyed."
--(Laura Parsons, from 'the hook', Charlottesville, VA... regarding Sesow's 2004 show)

"Matt is a true Brutarian, a self-taught painter who, despite having his work extensively shown and written about, has little interest in becoming part of the art network. Sesow appears unconcerned with communicating in the accepted tropes of the professional; he defers to no recognized code, nor to the rules of any recognized idiom. "Crude!" "Unfinished!" "Aberrant!" the boulevardier may jeer, but it may well be that Matt's approach results in a creative range beyond the normal compass of our responses . . .Perhaps not, nevertheless, Mr. Sesow has created a fascinating body of work "
--Interivew with Matt Sesow from "Brutarian" magazine, issue #28

"I suppose everybody has experienced some pain and fear in their lives. Just as paintings of pretty flowers and sunsets with horsies make us smile and feel content, I want to paint emotionally charged intense works that cause discomfort or inspire people to challenge themselves. I had some unique physical trauma as a child that got me started on this path... I'm a generally happy person, but I have taught myself to channel anger and intensity in art. The best musicians and painters have done it, those are my heroes."
--(Interview with Matt Sesow, 2004) READ THE INTERVIEW, BY CLICKING HERE