Matt Browning: A Screen of Trees

Mies van der Rohe Haus presents a selection of carved sculptures by Matt Browning (*1984, lives and works in New York), produced since 2013. Working from solid blocks of Douglas fir, Browning carves movable yet structurally interlinked chains. The sculptures’ architecture makes possible a mutable relationship to space, as they can linearly stretch and compress or expand into grid-like formations.

Browning’s sculptures only appear identical. The carvings’ individual surfaces, as well as their varying proportions, are determined by the dimensions and characteristics of each piece of wood. Taken together, the works seem to become a systematic set of units that can be composed like words, which become context-specific through their use in space rather than their making.

The exhibition at Mies van der Rohe Haus is a continuation of a presentation at Kunstverein München in the spring of 2026. Two nodes in a larger chain, ›Each in its Isolation, Locked Together in Unity‹.