MATT McCORMICK Solo Exhibition

DREAM LIVE DIE

March 10 – April 4, 2026
12:00 – 18:00
/ Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays

Sho+1 is pleased to announce DREAM LIVE DIE, a solo exhibition by Matt McCormick from Tuesday, March 10 through Saturday, April 4, 2026.

Los Angeles–based artist Matt McCormick is a contemporary artist who has gained attention for his cross-disciplinary practice spanning fine art, music, and road culture, while also operating an apparel brand, and maintains an Instagram following of approximately 130,000.

For this exhibition, the artist will visit to Japan, and an opening reception will be held on the first day. 
In addition, new works by McCormick will be presented at the Sho+1 booth during Art Fair Tokyo at Tokyo International Forum from March 13 to 15.
 We warmly invite you to experience the works while moving between the gallery and the fair — two spaces that together frame the exhibition.

We look forward to your visit to the gallery.

On the Exhibition ー Matt McCormick

The show is built around a set of American images that have been repeated long enough to feel familiar. A lot of that history is violent. Over time, the violence flattens out. It turns into images, dates, references. Things you recognize without reacting to much anymore. That condition is where the work sits. At the center of the space is a one-of-one book titled Dream Live Die. It sits on a table. The book is part of the exhibition. It isn’t a catalogue. The cover copies the original design of The Scarlet Letter. It points to judgment and consequence as inherited structures rather than ideas that need explanation. Seven postcard works are installed on the walls. Each one references a specific moment in American history. The images are already known. Each postcard is paired with a field of color. The color isn’t there to explain the image. It just sits next to it. On the back of each frame is a handwritten note. The Shaker chair and table are functional objects. They come from a belief in order and restraint. In the room, they don’t comment on the work. They hold the book. The larger paintings combine personal images and public history. One uses JFK alongside a Misfits Bullet poster I had on my wall when I was younger. Another uses an image of West Point cadets celebrating the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The images are presented without adjustment or resolution. The exhibition ends with a painting referencing CocaColonization. Coca-Cola is a familiar object that carried American influence quietly by blending into everyday life. That invisibility no longer holds. The image becomes.

Artist Profile

Matt McCormick
Born in 1987

Matt McCormick’s work operates at the intersection of cultural memory and material presence, distilling the residue of the American West into a highly personal yet broadly resonant visual language. Engaging with painting, drawing, and mixed media, McCormick’s practice navigates the tension between historic mythologies and contemporary detritus, where cowboys, highways, and Hollywood dreams dissolve into the textures of lived experience.

His work resists nostalgia, instead treating the American landscape as both a subject and a surface—one marked by erasure, reinvention, and cyclical decay. Fragments of signage, silhouettes of riders, and expanses of negative space suggest an inheritance in flux, a past that refuses to settle. Rather than reconstructing lost narratives, McCormick’s compositions act as palimpsests, where the West exists less as a fixed location and more as a shifting psychological terrain.

Informed by his time in Los Angeles and New York, McCormick’s art is as much about presence and transience as it is about identity and place. Through his practice, he locates poetry in fragmentation, exploring the American mythos not as a linear history but as a field of contradictions—unfinished, unsettled, and always in motion.

McCormick lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Miami, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Aspen, and San Francisco.

MATT McCORMICK
Instagram：@mattrmccormick
Website：https://www.mattrmccormick.com

Past Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions (selected)

2025	“Nothing To Do But Today”, One Trick Pony, Los Angeles “Running On Empty”, Galerie 75 Faubourg, Paris “Enter And Exit Through The Same Gate”, John Doe Gallery, Los Angeles
2024	“Faith”, Gallerie Enrico Navarra, Villa Navarra, Le Muy
2023	“Motel”, Gauthier Gallery, New York “Lost Weekend”, 2To3Fair, Los Angeles
2022	“Mustang”, Gauthier Gallery, Los Angeles “The Wish That Was” Artist Series, Miami “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere”, Nothing At All, Hong Kong “Lead Me Not Into Temptation”, OMNI, London “A Promised Dream?”, Just A Space, Paris
2021	“Gone To Heaven”, Gauthier Gallery, Los Angeles “The Sun Shines For Those Who Look Beyond The Clouds”, Gauthier Gallery, Los Angeles
2018	“I Never Believed In Much, But I Believed In You”, Cy Fiore, New York “The Last Cigarette”, Star Street, Hong Kong
2017	“Install II”, Levi’s House, Los Angeles
2016	Remnants Of The Rodeo, Smashbox Studios, Los Angeles One Of These Days, AGENDA, Long Beach Install I, Interscope Lounge, Los Angeles
2014	When I Die, Bury Me Face Down So The Whole World Can Kiss My Ass, The Good Company, New York

Group Exhibitions (selected)

2025	“That Was Then, This Is Now”, Jeffery Deitch, Miami “America Unframed”, American Art Projects, Berlin “Visual Language: Vistas”, Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles
2024	“Chuck Magazine Gallery Show”, Danny First: The Cabin & Bunker, Los Angeles
2023	“Group Shoe 3”, House Of Seiko, San Francisco
2022	Loveline, Long Beach Museum Of Art, Long Beach Beyond The Streets, Shanghai Out Of Step, Out Of Line, Long Beach Museum Of Art, Long Beach
2021	Twisted Dream, John Wolf, Los Angeles Miracle, Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles BTS On Paper, South Hampton Art Center, South Hampton WoP Avante Art, Woaw Gallery, Hong Kong LA To Milan, F2T, Milan
2020	1988, Anthony Gallery, Chicago
2019	We Buy Gold, Good To Know.FYI, Miami Unite Through Culture, Anthony Gallery, Chicago Momentum, Franchise, Miami
2018	Sky Above The Clouds, Darrow Contemporary, Aspen Matthew McCormick and Thrush Holmes, The Office, Miami
2017	A___is___A, Golborne Gallery, London
2016	Not As It Seems, Nothing As It Seems, All Day Everyday, Los Angeles Playboys & Girls, Slow Culture, Los Angeles Ishton’s Porch, Hou Yee Chan, Los Angeles
2015	9 Lives, Castle Fitzjohns Gallery, New York Legends Never Die, Mi Vida, Los Angeles Cat’s Out Of The Bag, Slow Culture, Los Angeles Outlined, Bergamont Station, Santa Monica Ruin Value, Astroetic Studios, Los Angeles Text Me, Hazen Projects, New York

Books and Catalogs (selected)

2024	Into The Distance Out Of The Great Wide Open Box Set. First Edition of 300. 9 x12”
2023	American Fireworks. First Edition of 250. 8.5×11” Motel. First Edition of 500. A Fantasy. First Edition of 100. 8.5×11” Northern Sky. First Edition of 100. 8.5×11”
2022	Lead Me Not Into Temptation. First Edition of 500. 9×12” Head To The Country. Second Edition of 300. 8×10”
2021	Horse. Just An Idea Publishing. First Edition of 400 Copies. 7.88”x10.24”
2020	Into The Distance. First Edition of 300 Hardcover. Second Edition of 1000 Softcover 9”x12”
2019	Head To The Country. First Edition of 75 Hardcover; 2022 Second Edition of 300 Softcover 8”x10”
2018	Stopped In For A Drink. First Edition of 75, Second Edition of 200 9.25”x6.25”
2017	The Last Cigarette. First Edition of 300 Copies, 8.5”x11”
2015	It’s Something Hard To Find. First Edition of 50 Signed Numbered Copies; Second Edition 50 Numbered Copies; 2016 100 Copies, 8”x10”
2014	And It Feels Like. First Edition of 50. 5.5”x8.5”

Exhibition Overview

MATT McCORMICK Solo Exhibition DREAM LIVE DIE
Date：March 10 (Tue) – April 4 (Sat), 2026
Time：12:00 – 18:00/ Closed on Sundays, Mondays and Public Holidays
Venue：Sho+1
Supported by：Hiromatsu Furniture Inc. LURF GALLERY

※Opening Reception
March 10 (Tue) 6pm – 8pm
The artist will attend the reception.

ART FAIR TOKYO 20
Date：March 13 (Fri) – 15 (Sun), 2026
Venue：Tokyo International Forum / B2F Hall E and Lobby Gallery

Sho+1 Booth : S033