artworks

to see what i am up to now check my instagram

native/invasive (2024 - ongoing)

The summer of sculpture is upon us! I am working on a series of assemblages this summer, the above being the first. Check my instagram for more documentation (link above or HERE).

surface music (2023 - ongoing)

Drawings on paper and mdf in various dimensions; black gesso, pastel, watercolor pencil, graphite. 

Scouring the notes app after collecting “lyrical fragments” for songs with words I will never write; turning those lyrics into drawings. Exploring the cosmos and also waxing zen with clumsy stencils. This series is ongoing and several lyrics appear reiteratively.

Available for purchase. Inquire here: hello @ matthewjsage.com

psyop (2024)





A pasture sculpture: native grass, flour jar, rainwater, extension cord, oil drum, colored pencil.

In running the risk of summoning errant precision, a provocation about being hesitant of ever being too sure. 

beeswax (2023)





A readymade pasture sculpture/drawing from 2023. A 1 lb. chunk of Colorado bees wax missing one toddler-sized bite, black paper, watercolor pencil, studio stool.

Inspiration struck in the form of a child’s curiosity. We share everything, we always have.

prepositions (2023)

wolverine farm publick house - fort collins, colorado

drawings + sculpture + sound


An intermedia installation at Wolverine Farm Publick House in Fort Collins, Colorado. September 2023. Featuring an array of work including drawing, sculpture, and sound. Reapplications of various materials exploring and troubling the spaces between the human-made domestic and the natural/nonhuman. An exploration of proximities generating meaning and identity.

paradise crick music video suite (2023)









A series of 3 music videos


Created for a roll-out of singles for Paradise Crick, a new LP to be released by RVNG Intl. in May 2023.


Videos feature an extended curiosity in blurring the boundaries between natural worlds and digital spaces. Special interests in palimpsestic overlapping, humor and characters, and invitations for pleasure and adventure.

choir (w/ pope.l) (2019)

the whitney museum - new york city, new york

sound & sound apparatus implementation
in collaboration with pope.l

Pope.L is an artist whose work explores race, identity, class, performance, text, and everything in between those aforementioned containers. On CHOIR he created an installation at The Whitney; a public fountain holding nearly 1,000 gallons of water that filled and drained through copper pipes and a water fountain. I was asked to collaborate with Pope.L on this installation by creating sound design and microphone implementation to amplify the auditory elements of this installation. Using foley techniques, cardioid and contact microphones, pop filters, archival sound sources, and three channel audio, I created an enveloping soundscape to accompany this physical installation. In addition to the installation in the gallery space, sound design was implemented in the lobby of The Whitney, a playful and equally dreadful dripping sound that appears and disappears in intervals, to signal the presence of Pope.L's works in the museum.



From the New York Times: At the Whitney, his room-size “Choir” features an industrial water tank installed in a darkened space and eerie sound elements created by contact microphones placed near the pipes leading to the tank. Pope.L does this to show how even “neutral” or natural elements like water get embroiled in social and political battles, from Jim Crow laws that prohibited African-Americans from using certain water fountains to the recent water-contamination crisis in Flint, Mich.



From an essay by Christopher Lew, curator at the Whitney: Physically, Choir is centered on an absence. After walking through a corridor formed by black mesh fabric and turning a corner, the viewer is hit with a bright light, illuminating from behind a milky white 1,000-gallon tank that sits high on a platform. The tank is weighty and marred by use, as much a void as a container. Haloed by the gallery lights, it achieves a certain monumentality. Directly above the tank, an old drinking fountain is suspended upside down from the ceiling. The fountain gushes at a volume and rate that surpasses normal capacity, sending water straight down into the mouth of the tank below. As if it could fill—or overfill—the tank, the intensity of the flow is matched by the amplified sound of the cascade. It reverberates loudly within the gallery and into the Whitney’s lobby just beyond the doors. Buried in the sonic maelstrom are sounds of singing and shouting, voices that at first are indistinguishable from the rush of water but later grow in presence and volume. Then, as quickly as it began, the fountain stops, letting the water lap the sides of the tank, the waves visible through the semitranslucent plastic. A moment later, a pump kicks on—its mechanic whir also picked up by the microphones installed in the gallery—and the water drains from the tank through a network of copper pipes that run throughout the space. The cycle repeats like a delirious ritual revolving around the tank; there is a constant movement and flow, an alternating presence and absence of abundance. The tank is a void that is filled with a roar, only to be pumped out and replenished again in a Sisyphean act—not unlike Lucy’s futile attempt to stave off the flow of candies.


More information on this installation here.

impressionism.jpg (2014-2019)




digital photographs

An ongoing series of digital SLR photographs taken in the Impressionism wing at the Art Institute of Chicago. Street-photography style portraits of people interacting with world-famous paintings and their technology simultaneously. Exploring the curious boundaries between the public, the private, the high-brow and the everyday. Without moral interjection, exploring how technology mediates experience.


More photos in the set not featured here, but available if you're curious.

progress/decay (2014-2019)






digital photographs

A series, a catalog, an archive of 200+ digital SLR photographs taken around Chicago's Northwest side showcasing the urban landscape in a state of flux, signage, development, and destruction. Focusing as much on the symbolic inference of didactic objects as the colors and compositions of this particular American environ. A fence becomes a neighbor.


Many more photos in this set not here, but available if you are curious.

what is the big idea? (2019)



hyde park art center - chicago, illinois

risograph prints, enamel figures, scavenger hunt pamphlet 

An installation/scavenger hunt featuring risograph printed maps and micro-poems, enamel miniature figurines, and a wall drawing as a part of the group exhibition Beginning to See the Light curated by Ariel Gentalen at Hyde Park Art Center, February - July 2019.

unmown strip (2019)



my backyard - portage park - chicago, illinois

native and invasive species, lawn mower, light and water, time

A time-based "land art gag" in my backyard, performed and documented Spring thru Summer 2019. Built around my lawnmower running out of gas halfway through a mowing, and eventually leading to considerations of habitat regeneration, invasive species dynamics, questioning the patriarchal legacy of Eurocentric horticultural practices, and a "mow-hawk" pun.


The central strip of my relatively groomed backyard was left unmowed for an entire season. Invasive species, namely creeping charley (Glechoma hederacea) overran the strip. Eventually a catalpa tree (Catalpa speciosa) sprouted and took root.