For nearly two decades, Met’z practice has been guided by an inquiry into the relationship between form and the larger field in which it emerges.
Known for a language of abstraction that explores the relationship between chance, control, and the physical properties of pigment on canvas, Metz has developed a practice which process itself becomes a primary subject. In this new body of work, the human figure emerges from the same process-driven approach that has long defined his paintings. Rather than marking a departure from abstraction, these works extend an investigation into how forms become perceptible while remaining inseparable from the conditions from which they arise.
Bodies emerge from expansive fields of color, appearing and disappearing simultaneously. Rather than portraying specific individuals, the figures become sites through which questions of presence and absence, individuality and interconnectedness, figure and ground can be explored.
The process remains at the heart of Metz’s practice. Pigment is poured directly onto raw, unprimed canvases, allowing gravity, absorbency, humidity, evaporation and time to participate actively in the formation of each image. The resulting surfaces reveal a coexistence of intention and contingency, bearing witness both to deliberate action and to forces beyond the artist’s control.
Landon Metz is an American artist based in New York City. His work has been presented internationally in solo exhibitions and site-specific projects at institutions including the Pietro Canonica Museum, Rome (2018), and has been included in exhibitions at MAC Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Lissone, Lissone (2025), the Palais des Études des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2022), the Nassau County Museum of Art, New York (2020), and the Villa Medici, Rome (2017), among others. In 2014, he was an artist-in-residence at the ADN Collection in Bolzano, Italy, and in 2019 he was nominated for the Prix Jean-François Prat.
