Matt Hollis

Matt Hollis is an artist based in Los Angeles. He has shown his work extensively in the DC metro area and in L.A. He recently earned his MFA at Otis College of Art & Design, graduating with an Academic Excellence award in 2019. In 2016 Hollis was awarded an Artist Fellowship Grant from the DCCAH. In 2015 he was invited by Transformer gallery to take part in the Sister Cities Grant from the D.C. Commission of Arts & Humanities on an artistic research trip to France.

In this series of digital collages from 2020, Hollis continues exploring the theme of “the ecstasy of undoing,” a religious-like fervor for letting go of one’s individuality/physicality and melting back into the collective flow. This theme was first explored in Hollis’s 2019 reimagining of Bernini’s “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” which featured organ-like sculptural forms suspended in air, as if sprung loose from the body. In this series of collages, this ecstatic fervor is further sensualized by the introduction of pornographic bodies in bondage. Hollis digitally grafts odd appendages and bloodied body parts crafted from photos of his sculptural works onto subjects existing in a state between pleasure and pain.