Email : youthwaste@me.com
Twitter : @youthwaste
Curated Shows:
2011 Everything Must Go!! Group Show, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
Solo Exhibitions:
2011 Youth Waste @ Youth Group, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
Group Exhibitions:
2012 Relief: Sandy Art Benefit, Trumbull Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
2012 Art of The T 2, The Pinebox Gallery, Brooklyn, Ny.
2012 Red Bull Art Curates, Villain Gallery, Brooklyn, Ny.
2012 Film Por Vida, Book & Job Gallery, San Francisco, Ca.
2012 Prince St Kings, PSK Art Loft, New York City Ny.
2012 Get Up!, Yes Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
2012 Rot Fischlein Exhibit, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
2011 Strength In Numbers, Northern SoulGallery, Hoboken Nj.
2011 Everything Must Go!! Group Show, Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery, Brooklyn Ny.
2011 Film Por Vida, Wayward Gallery, London Uk.
2011 Subsersive Arts, Brooklyn Motor Works, Brooklyn Ny.
2010 Pedals and Prints, Crewest Gallery, Los Angeles Ca.
2009 Emulsion Stew, Empire Seven Studios, San Jose, Ca
2009 Insight Garage Artists, Gorilla! Gallery, Santa Ana, Ca
2006 Dethkills Warehouse Party, Dethkills HQ, Los angeles, Ca
Matt Dobbs was born June 1987 in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where he spent most of his life. He is currently a Brooklyn based designer and photographer, creating work that explores many different mediums including painting, installation, graffiti, screen-printing, and mix media images. Despite the interweaving of many mediums, his work remains cohesive and elements of other mediums are incorporated well together, where themes and motifs are consistent throughout the versatile content of his work. The urban documentarian style of Dobbs work is a persistent vision, exploring a childlike observance of the grittier aspects of American subculture, unveiling his "own generations fucked up youth, and fucked up shit in general." Most importantly his work encompasses a generation of life in the city, capturing the essence and influences of graffiti, skateboarding, punk, and the subcultures of an urban society.
Dobbs work began as a response to trying to capture his environment, which eventually transitioned into the documentation of the "I've been there" moments while skating around and doing graffiti. By taking inspiration from everything, his work is always changing in accordance to his surroundings. Much of his older artwork deals with more monochromatic scales of color and much darker subject matter. The earlier minimalist black and white paintings reveal very technical and graphic influences whereas his most recent artworks are painted in bright colors playing with background, layering, and texture. The colors used in much of Dobbs work are influenced by the colors of the bright California sky and west coast graffiti. His most recent work involves mix media images don on canvas, which combine wheat pastes of his photographs superimposed onto the canvas with bright watercolors painted over the images, playing with texture and overlapping effects of color and content. Expressing the duality of light/dark, positive/negative in terms if color and content, Dobbs creates a balance by bringing a lighter perspective to his subject matter.
-Kelsey Novick