The Trippy Art Of Matt Reynolds

Not every artist has the ability to stand out in a crowd filled with talented creators, especially in an age where everyone can use AI to generate intricate images in a matter of seconds, but the body of work of Matt Reynolds certainly catches your eye once you cross paths with it. It’s weird, it’s cool and it’s exciting, which are not easy things to evoke nowadays after we have basically seen it all. Reynolds, who grew up in Mill Valley, California is an animator, an artist, a sculptor, an illustrator and also a teacher.

"Success for me is convincing a viewing audience to be more open-minded"

Matt’s background includes studying art and filmmaking at Bates College in Maine, where he was introduced to animated films of Jan Svankmajer and other Eastern European artists, which ended up being a clear reference in Reynold’s work, as he himself said in an interview with Voyage LA: “I tried to channel that Czech proclivity for dark humor and existential vulgarity into my work after college through grotesque mask sculptures and sisyphean animated fables: Work which I was able to exhibit in Portland, Oregon and Berlin.

After serving coffee for three years in Portland and trying to level-up in animation through YouTube tutorials, I decided it was time to go “legit” and I entered into the Experimental Animation program at CalArts for my MFA. There I fell in love with hand-drawn animation and made three short films that got me some Vimeo Staff Picks and attention at SXSW, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, AFI Fest, and Annecy in France. Since graduating in 2016, I’ve been doing freelance commissions for clients like The Atlantic, Adult Swim, and TED Ed while also holding down a couple of different teaching jobs. Recently I completed an artist residency at The Camera Obscura Art Lab in Santa Monica where I was able to meld my sculpture work with animation and I am hoping to continue in this vein”.

In that same interview, Matt talks about his work, what he’s focused on right now and what’s to come in the near future: “As the sole proprietor of my freelance animation services, I’d say my specialty is “WTF-able” 2D animation. I say that based on about half of the YouTube comments on anything I release – Even things that I perceived as relatively tame! I’m glad that potential clients that reach out usually want to hear what ways I envision making the project stranger; I feel proud that I’ve been able to establish an advertised conviction in my own flavor of weirdness.

Success for me is convincing a viewing audience to be more open-minded and hungry for human complexity in the art they consume. If I make an animated short, commercial spot, or artwork that inspires someone to be more curious about similar work that toes a line between horror/humor, or beauty and the grotesque, then that’s a big “W” in my book”.

We certainly also see some of John Kricfalusi work in Reynold’s, as it takes us back to that 90s’ grotesque aesthetic, which is nothing but a compliment. But Matt’s animations go beyond that, as he takes us on a visual acid trip each time he makes his art come to life, and this includes his sculptures, which are a physical, literal representation of the weirdness we see in his 2D creations. We can’t wait to see what Matt has in store for us next, if we would have to hand-pick a favorite piece from his current body of work, it would definitely have to be what he did with the animated titles for 2019’s ‘Villains’, directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. Matt Reynolds at its best.