IFPDA Print Fair 2026

The predominant motif of the series Birkin Rosso is inspired by the actress Jane Birkin (1946-2023) and her role in the 1976 film Je t’aime moi non plus.

Individually, the prints are enigmatic, self-contained mysteries, but when viewed together they inform and enrich each other. By repeating and yet varying the same subject, Saunders emphasises how still and moving images are linked; their seriality enhances the cinematic impression when viewed one after the other. In a particular scene from the film, Birkin’s character is lying in a bathtub. Saunders explores the experience of heightened sensation in the shifting space between being submerged under water and emerging again, as he depicts the figure in this liminal moment.

When Saunders began the series, he was eager to experiment and push the boundaries of traditional printmaking techniques. The series evolved through variations of the same elements, echoing the work of sculptor Medardo Rosso (1858-1928), who is another key source of inspiration in Saunders’ work. Rosso’s practice typically moved between different mediums and his sculptures are characterised by the same ambiguity of matter and space found in Saunders’ prints. The series combines photogravure with woodcut, two techniques rarely seen together. In each print, the figure materialises and erodes at the same time, giving a sense of being underwater or in a state of flux.

Matt Saunders worked on this series of landscape etchings over an extended period between 2015 and 2023. In an allusion to Wallace Stevens’ poem Six Significant Landscapes, the series comprises six prints, each drawn from film stills significant to the artist.

These landscapes are at once empty scenes open to projection and also emblems of the emotive and narrative currents swirling off camera. Together, the series reflects the filmmakers that have had a profound impact on Saunders’ practice over the years and how cinema can evoke a longing for the unknown and mysterious.

Printmaking is an intrinsic part of Saunders’ practice, providing a mode of expression that incorporates multiple techniques that can be layered together to create his complex compositions. The resulting pictorial spaces lead the viewer from one viewpoint to another and back, like in a constantly changing labyrinth. Saunders freely navigates multiple figurative and abstract spaces simultaneously without losing focus. We are pulled into the works and enter their universe without noticing the effort it took to create them.

Matt Saunders was born in 1975 in Tacoma, Washington, lives between New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts and Berlin. Matt Saunders is a professor of Art, Film, and Visual studies at Harvard.

Saunders enacts painting as a time-based and transitive medium through his camera-less photography, multi-screen animation and innovative painting and printmaking processes. Best known for his haunting portraits and landscapes (the imagery culled from a myriad of sources including avant-garde cinema and found photographs) and moving-image works, Saunders’ practice uses analogue materials to explore the fleetingness, mobility and affective power of images.

Solo exhibitions of his work were held by the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri (2018), Tank Shanghai Project Space, China (2018); Tate Liverpool (2012); and the Renaissance Society of Chicago (2010), among others. His group show participations include Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, New York (2024); Ecole des Beaux arts de Paris, France (2022); the American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York (2022); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2020); The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2016); and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016).

Matt Saunders’ work is in the collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the UCLA Hammer Museum, California; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., among others. He was a recipient of the 2022 American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts Purchase Prize, the 2015 Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the 2013 Prix Jean-François Prat, and the 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award.