NEWS / BIO
May 2025: Gay Men’s Book Club included in group exhibition “We Can Talk About Something Else” at Loods 6, May 9-May 24, Amsterdam.
February 2025: Focus Programme on Matthew Lax at Rotterdam Film Festival, screening seven films, including two world premieres and a public installation
January 2025: TIRED DOG 2 in Artillery Magazine
November 2024 : A TIRED DOG IS A GOOD DOG, PART 2 solo exhibition at Human Resources Los Angeles
January 2024: Recipient of Lightning Fund Grant from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Andy Warhol Foundation
May 2025: Gay Men’s Book Club included in group exhibition “We Can Talk About Something Else” at Loods 6, May 9-May 24, Amsterdam.
February 2025: Focus Programme on Matthew Lax at Rotterdam Film Festival, screening seven films, including two world premieres and a public installation
January 2025: TIRED DOG 2 in Artillery Magazine
November 2024 : A TIRED DOG IS A GOOD DOG, PART 2 solo exhibition at Human Resources Los Angeles
January 2024: Recipient of Lightning Fund Grant from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Andy Warhol Foundation
mattsamlax [at] gmail [dot] com
Matthew Lax is an artist-filmmaker and writer working between New York, New Jersey, and Los Angeles. Lax often collaborates with animals, non-actors, and the “everyday ensembles” found within families, lovers, hobby clubs, athletic teams, and kink communities. Working between documentary and narrative, the resulting films, writing and organizational projects extrapolate from the participants' real-life relationships and Lax’s own autobiography to explore group behaviors, power, language and labor.
Lax’s screenings and exhibitions include Viennale (Austria), IHME Contemporary (Helsinki), Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Berlin), MIX New York and MIX Brasil (São Paulo), table (Chicago), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG), Human Resources LA, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (LACA), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), REDCAT, LA Film Forum, Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, The Drawing Center (New York), and CROSSROADS (San Francisco), among others. In 2025 he was the subject of a survey presentation at the 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Lax received a BFA from Syracuse University and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Lax’s organizational projects include those held at Anthology Film Archives (NY), Fellows of Contemporary Art (LA), and Human Resources LA. Lax’s writing has appeared in print and online publications including MARCH Journal, Texte Zur Kunst, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), BOMB, ArtPractical, and Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), as well a catalog contribution with the Lawndale Art Center (Houston, TX) and two zine editions with Inga Books (Chicago). Lax is a recipient of a 2024 Lightning Fund Grant from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and the Andy Warhol Foundation.