John Matturri was raised in Newark, lives in NYC, and for several years has maintained a studio in Newark. After graduate studies in Cinema at NYU and Philosophy at CUNY-Graduate Center, he taught both philosophy and film at Queens College for many years. He participated in photographic workshops with Lisette Model and Ken Heyman, and his practice greatly benefited from collaborations with many prominent experimental artists, including Ken Jacobs, Jack Smith, Richard Foreman, John Zorn, Stuart Sherman, and Shelley Hirsch.

Following initial experiments in experimental film, Matturri concentrated on slide shows, which after performing in a number of John Zorn musical compositions came to involve a wide range of techniques of improvised optical manipulation. His interest in montage led — particularly after a hiatus associated with his philosophical studies — to a shift to structuring images and words into arrangements and sequences on panels and walls.

After an initial Emily Harvey Foundation residency in Venice, Italy, in 2007, his work has centered on various modes of presentation of still images based on extensive photographic city archives. Matturri’s work has been shown at the Brooklyn Historical
Society Museum, Downtown Whitney, Collective for Living Cinema, The Phatory, June Bateman Fine Arts, Newark Public Library, and the Archivio Emily Harvey, among other venues.

In 2009, he was co-curator of “Beginningless Thought / Endless Seeing,” a comprehensive NYU retrospective of the work of Stuart Sherman, selected to Artforum‘s year’s 10 best list for two years and P.S.1’s 2010 five-year review of significant art events. His most recent major critical writing was “Homeless Objects: Notes on Jack Smith,” published in a special issue of Criticism devoted to Smith’s work.