matthew schrader

Field, 2018, wood, existing architecture

My mom Cathy Schrader passed away on January 7th. She was a truly amazing person, I’m heartbroken. She was a teacher in the Philadelphia Public School system for years, she helped found an alternative school, and she tutored high school students in preparation for the GED and SAT among many other things. When we were kids anytime my brother and I went to a store or restaurant with our mom we would run into excited former students of hers. She was an avid reader, gardener and quilter, she loved cats and coffee and she really loved people. She knew everyone in her neighborhood, loved telling stories, and loved connecting people. My mom had leukemia for many years and had two bone marrow transplants then health issues from the transplants but through all of this she was an eternal optimist. I really miss her. Rest in peace 💗.

📸 ENSEMBLE by MATTHEW SCHRADER Ensemble, a book of photographic research by Matthew Schrader, featuring written contributions by poet Ed Roberson and scholar Sarah Jane Cervenak, is available via KAJE’s shop. Ensemble comes out of Schrader’s decade long practice of photographing aberrations in the built environment, with a particular focus on the spontaneous and invasive growths of the Ailanthus altissima tree species. “By dwelling with the fragment, Schrader’s photography mobilizes the tree’s own ecological and aesthetic resistance to the myth of its hypervisibility,” writes Sarah Jane Cervenak, “a myth that the violence of city/earth/sky mapping presumes and requires.” Scans and design via @other_means   👊 Link in bio KAJE Shop

* Subsurface, 2025 Ground Penetrating Radar scan of a two by two foot area, UV-cured inkjet print on aluminum A recording or reading of a space below the gallery floor. These scans are used to determine the location of rebar and infrastructural elements like electric, water or gas pipes. Subsurface @kaje.world through October 4th Photography by @etienne_fro

📚 BOOK LAUNCH 📚 The launch of “Ensemble”, a monograph of artistic research by Matthew Schrader, will take place on Friday, October 3rd, from 6-8pm at KAJE and feature readings by Mirene Arsanios, Omar Berrada, Sarah Jane Cervenak, and Nora Treatbaby. ‘Ensemble” offers a core sample of Schrader’s decade-long practice of photographing aberrations in the built environment. The spontaneous growth patterns of the Ailanthus altissima tree species have operated as a primary signifier throughout these photographic pursuits, leading the artist’s aperture along entangled divisions of space and matter, where barriers appear resisted and pierced through the force of what cuts up through the ground. “Ensemble”features contributions by writer and scholar Sarah Jane Cervenak and poet Ed Roberson. 📚

* Tie, 2025 Rebar ties Subsurface @kaje.world through October 4th Photography by @etienne_fro

‘Subsurface’ brings artist Matthew Schrader’s ongoing sculptural engagement with landscape and the built environment into proximity with the complex geographic conditions surrounding KAJE in Gowanus, Brooklyn—a region bearing historic degrees of industrial contamination and land abuse. While taking up the area’s environmental concerns, Subsurface is not bound explicitly to the site of KAJE within this coordinate structure. Works on view have materialized through deep attention to divisions, resistance, entanglement, barriers, force, and ground, as these attributes fuse and interlock in terrain Schrader has been mapping across innumerable sites over the past decade, forming a kind of syntax for reading the forms his research practice yields. Accordingly, the collection of works presented in Subsurface assume a transposable legend for navigating any terrain where the standard rhythms of the built environment break or open up. The exhibition will culminate with the release of ‘Ensemble’, a publication featuring a selection of Schrader’s photographic research from 2022–2024, with contributions by writer and scholar Sarah Jane Cervenak and poet Ed Roberson. On view September 6–October 4, 2025.  1-4. Matthew Schrader, Subsurface, Installation view. September 6 – October 4, 2025, KAJE, Brooklyn, NY. 5. Matthew Schrader, Valerian, 2025, Valerian root. 6. Matthew Schrader, Tie, 2025, Rebar ties. 7. Matthew Schrader, Subsurface, Installation view. September 6 – October 4, 2025, KAJE, Brooklyn, NY. 8. Matthew Schrader, Fold, 2025, Unfired clay. 9. Matthew Schrader, Fold, 2025, Unfired clay. 10. Matthew Schrader, Subsurface, Installation view. September 6 – October 4, 2025, KAJE, Brooklyn, NY. 11. Matthew Schrader, Subsurface, 2025, Ground Penetrating Radar scan of a two by two foot area, UV-cured inkjet print on aluminum. Photos courtesy Etienne Frossard @etienne_fro

Subsurface, a solo exhibition of work by artist Matthew Schrader (@soupy_matrix ), will be on display at KAJE from September 7th to October 4th. Subsurface brings Schrader’s ongoing sculptural engagement with landscape and the built environment into proximity with the complex geographic conditions surrounding KAJE in Gowanus, Brooklyn—a region bearing historic degrees of industrial contamination and land abuse. While taking up the area’s environmental concerns, Subsurface is not bound explicitly to the site; works on view have materialized through deep attention to divisions, resistance, entanglement, barriers, force, and ground, as these attributes fuse and interlock in terrain Schrader has been mapping across innumerable sites over the past decade, forming a kind of syntax for reading the forms his research practice yields. The exhibition will also be marked by the release of Ensemble, a publication of Schrader’s photographic research from 2022-2024, featuring written contributions by writer-scholar Sarah Jane Cervenak and poet Ed Roberson. Please join us from 6-9 PM on Saturday, September 6th, for an opening reception!

* I’m honored to be one of the six Howard Foundation Fellows this year in Object Based Arts and Installation Based Arts. This fellowship will support a new project focused on landscape and material memory that I will begin while I am on sabbatical. Thank you Howard Foundation, I am extremely grateful. Congratulations to all the grant recipients! @brownu 🪨🌾

* Ensemble (ground), 2024 C-Prints The Shape of a City @franzkaka is open through February 8th. The Shape of a City features artists whose work engages the physical realities of the cities in which they live and work to investigate how these materials shape and are shaped by political, social and economic forces. Taking it’s name from the title of the French Surrealist writer Julien Gracq’s portrait of his home city of Nantes, The Shape of a City presents a fragmented view of the urban environment and the multifaceted histories layered upon its surfaces. Paying particular attention to contours, edges, and boundaries, the works include collected and recorded fragments that exist at the limits separating public and private space. These divisions are seldom static and though the city may at times appear cold and unyielding, its shape remains contingent and ever evolving.

* Ensemble (ground) C-Prints, 2024 The Shape of a City @franzkaka On view through February 8th 🌿

* M. Obultra 3 installed in Here Now: Art and Migration at BCA. This work was originally staged @white_columns in 2021, composed of elements published by @m.obultra . The last day of the show is Saturday May 11th. Curated by Dr. Sarah Rogers and Heather Ferrell. @btvcityarts