I make paintings, objects, and work in public about desire, control, and ownership.
VIEW THE WORK ↓PAINTING + PUBLIC INTERVENTION
SKINNY CHRIST
The body becomes a project. Transformation becomes a belief.
Ozempic needles and packaging take the form of crosses. On a billboard, an oversized needle supports a deflated body. Skinny Christ brings together appetite, belief, and the pressure to remake ourselves, asking what we place our faith in when the body is never enough.
SCREENPRINT + PAINTING
PAINTINGS
Desire, control, and the images we learn to believe in.
My paintings move across subjects and symbols, using screenprinting and painting to examine how images shape what we want and what we believe. The works shown here are from my recent Skinny Christ series: Ozempic needles and packaging arranged as crosses, bringing the promise of bodily transformation into the language of faith.
ZINES + BANDANAS + SCULPTURAL PUBLISHING
OBJECTS
The packaging is part of the work.
I turn photographs into objects that borrow the appearance of things we consume, desire, or discard. Across appetite, status, and control of the body, their meaning shifts as they’re handled, opened, worn, or read.
PARTY
An oversized dollar bill and cocaine occupy the street. A printed object takes the form of an empty baggie. The spectacle is public. The object fits in your hands.
ROTTEN
A deer head and blood staged on a downtown Los Angeles sidewalk. A bandana and photography zine packaged like raw meat and displayed in a butcher’s case. The same confrontation moves from the street into something you can hold, wear, and read.
SKINNY
The Ozempic image moves from the billboard into paintings, bandanas, and printed objects. Its context changes with each form: something prescribed, something displayed, something worn.
PUBLIC ART + OWNERSHIP
UNWRAP & STEAL
I wrap original artworks like gifts, put them up in cities around the world, release clues, and people steal them.
The clues set off a hunt to be the first to steal the work. The race, the taking, and the change of ownership become part of the artwork itself.
PUBLIC INTERVENTIONS + PERFORMANCE ART
PUBLIC WORK
The work extends beyond the gallery.
My public practice spans installations, objects, and performance art. I alter billboards, stage sculptures in the street, and turn photographs into zines and objects disguised as everyday products. A deer head and blood appear on a sidewalk. A deflated body hangs from a giant Ozempic needle. In Unwrap & Steal, I wrap original artworks like gifts, put them up in cities around the world, release clues, and people steal them. Performances range from running through Hollywood in a clown costume with a pink-wrapped canvas to making an audience break through concrete to enter an exhibition. Desire, control, and ownership become public confrontations. People can participate, object, or walk away.
A worldwide record of artworks and objects placed, found, and stolen.
VIEW THE WORLDWIDE MAP ↗
SELECTED RECORD
EXHIBITION · PUNX: The Art of Dead City & Friends, Los Angeles · Photography
PUBLICATION · Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History, Vikki Tobak · Photographs of Young Thug and A$AP Rocky
PUBLICATION · Beyond the Streets · Photography
COVERAGE · Ozempic billboard intervention
Rolling Stone · Billboard · Vanity Fair · Hypebeast
ABOUT
Matt Adam is an artist based in Los Angeles, originally from Toronto. He works across paintings, photography, objects, performance art, and public interventions. His practice considers how desire is shaped and how ownership changes our relationship to an image or object.
For available works, commissions, and exhibition inquiries. Include the title or a description of the work you’re interested in.