Landon Metz (b. 1985, Phoenix, Arizona) is a New York artist whose practice centers on painting as a philosophical and experiential inquiry into presence, perception, and being. Rooted in painting yet encompassing installation, sound, performance, and sculpture, his practice is an act of creating conditions for attention and perceptual awareness. Metz’s spare, sensorial visual language navigates tensions between control and chance, form and formlessness, intimacy and immersion, using these dynamics as both method and metaphor, shaping the conceptual and experiential foundations of his practice.

His paintings are made through a deliberate collaboration with material forces. Using thin washes of custom-mixed dye poured onto raw, unprimed canvas, Metz allows gravity, absorption, evaporation, and surface tension to guide the formation of each composition. The pigment merges with the fibers of the canvas over time, introducing unpredictability as a generative principle within a rigorously disciplined process. The resulting biomorphic shapes are soft, rhythmic, and incomplete, registering time as contact. As Metz notes, his practice is built to “allow the element of chance to intervene,” while remaining grounded in conceptual and philosophical constants.

Metz often works in sequences and site-responsive installations, presenting diptychs, triptychs, or extended multi-panel installations that extend beyond the frame to engage the architecture and the viewer’s embodied experience. Encountered as perceptual environments rather than static images, the works invite movement, pause, and heightened awareness. Scale becomes a philosophical tool; intimate works encourage closeness and material focus, while expansive installations produce immersive, temporal experiences. While abstraction has long anchored Metz’s visual language, in his recent work Metz introduces subtle gestures toward figuration, forming a dynamic tension between abstraction and figuration that deepens his ongoing inquiry into being, selfhood, and interconnection.

Born in the American Southwest, Metz’s sensitivity to light, openness, and spatial rhythm is shaped by the desert landscape of his youth. He currently lives and works in New York, where his practice continues to evolve as a sustained meditation on presence, materiality, and the ineffable. His work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and institutions across Europe and North America with solo exhibitions at von Bartha (Basel and Copenhagen), Waddington Custot (London), Francesca Minini (Milan), Massimo Minini (Brescia), Gana Art (Seoul), Loyal (Stockholm), Sean Kelly (New York), and Museo Pietro Canonica (Rome). He has participated in group exhibitions at institutions and galleries including the Nassau County Museum of Art, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Lissone), Timothy Taylor (London), Paul Kasmin (New York), and Villa Medici, Rome, and was artist-in-residence at the ADN Collection in Bolzano, Italy.

Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions

2025
Landon Metz, Von Bartha, Copenhagen, Denmark

2024
Tell Me How You Feel Inside, Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy
Landon Metz, Waddington Custot, London, England
Being Infinite, Waddington Custot, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

2023
I Cut The Hairs On My Head Yesterday But They Grew Back So I Cut Them Again Today…, Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland
It Was Unusually Quiet On Lafayette Street…, Gana Art, Seoul, South Korea

2022
A Different Kind of Paradise, Sean Kelly, New York, NY
The Sky Isn’t Really Blue, Von Bartha, Copenhagen, Denmark
Come Together, De Brock Gallery, Knokke, Belgium

2021
Love Songs, Waddington Custot, London, England
Euphoria, Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland
It snowed and a half sphere accumulated on a post outside the window, Loyal, Stockholm, Sweden
Nineteen Eighty-Five, with Eva LeWitt, VI, VII, Oslo, Norway

2020
Clarity, Francesca Minini, Milan, Italy

2019
Three Eleven, Andersen’s, Copenhagen, Denmark
Landon Metz, Patrick De Brock Gallery, Knokke, Belgium

2018
Asymmetrical Symmetry, Sean Kelly, New York, NY
Feels So Right Now, Von Bartha, Basel, Switzerland
Landon Metz, Museo Pietro Canonica a Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy

2017
Fourth Wall, Von Bartha, S-chanf, Switzerland
At the bodega on the corner they have black plums 2 for $1 and cactus pears 2 for $1 and tangerines 2 for $1, Andersen’s, Copenhagen, Denmark
Quintets, VI, VII, Oslo, Norway

2016
Morris Louis / Landon Metz, with Morris Louis, Paul Kasmin, New York, NY
&, Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy
&, Francesca Minini, Milan, Italy

2015
Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh, Andersen’s, Copenhagen, Denmark
Landon Metz, James Fuentes, New York, NY

2014
Plose, ADN Collection, Bolzano, Italy
Michael Jackson Penthouse, Retrospective, Hudson, NY

2013
Shake Shack Guggenheim, with Ethan Cook, V1, Copenhagen, Denmark

2012
Still, TORRI, Paris, France

2011
Something To Dance To, Preteen Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico

Group Exhibitions

2025
Premio Lissone 2025, MAC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone, Italy

2024
Cook, Knoebel, Metz, De Brock, Knokke, Belgium
Hovering on the Edge, Timothy Taylor, London, England

2022
We Paint!, Beaux-Arts de Paris Museum, Paris, France

2020
Blue., Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY
Reflections: Open Ended, Gana Art, Seoul, South Korea

2017
Morris Louis / Landon Metz, with Morris Louis, Paul Kasmin, New York, NY
Corners / In Between, Curated by Eva Brioschi, Norma Mangione, Turin, Italy
Greffes, Villa Medici, Rome, Italy
Five years of VI, VII, Independent Regence, Brussels, Belgium

2016
Splotch, Sperone Westwater, New York, NY

2015
Printed Matter, New York, NY
The Essential Bruce Springsteen, Andersen’s, Copenhagen, Denmark

2014
173 E 94th St / Chausee de Waterloo 550, Paul Kasmin at Middlemarch, Brussels, Belgium
From Pre-History to Post-Everything, Sean Kelly, New York, NY
La Chose Encadrée, SWG3, Glasgow International Biennial, Glasgow, Scotland

2013
F(re)e Play, Stadium, New York, NY
La Suite, TORRI, Paris, France
Organix, Curated by Diego Cortez, Luciano Benetton Collection, Venice, Italy
Space Whole Karaoke, Middlemarch, Brussels, Belgium

2012
Slowed & Throwed, Chinatown Arcade, New York, NY
Can’t Stop Rock Lobster, Shoot The Lobster, New York, NY
TLK DRTY, Amstel 41, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2011
Historia Mysteria, Renwick Gallery, New York, NY
Post Truth, Reference Art Gallery, Richmond, Virginia
Saint Lawrence Ice, Wolfe Island, Ontario, Canada