Biography
Matthew Willie Garcia is an American printmaker born in 1985 in California and currently based in Kansas City, Missouri, whose practice extends mokuhanga into the realms of projection-mapped animation, large-scale installation, and what he calls "4D Printmaking." His work explores ideas of queer quantum mechanics, intersectional existence, and speculative science-fiction identity narratives through color abstraction, making him one of the more conceptually adventurous artists working in the contemporary mokuhanga field.
Garcia earned his BFA in Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the University of Kansas. He has traveled to Japan to participate in MI-Lab, the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory, deepening his understanding of traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques while developing a practice that pushes those traditions in new directions. His approach to mokuhanga embraces the medium's material qualities -- the transparency of water-based pigments, the registration of multiple blocks, the tactile quality of washi paper -- while deploying them in service of abstract compositions that suggest cosmic space, quantum phenomena, and dimensional fluidity.
His major series include "Venting Space-Time," which explores the visual metaphors of scientific theory through layered color fields, and "We Are Space-Time" and "We Hold Space and Time Within Us," which propose a queer reading of physics and cosmology through printmaking. The series "Embracing the Void" confronts absence and presence through abstract mokuhanga compositions. His work has been included in exhibitions including "Queer Abstraction" at the Nerman Contemporary Museum of Art, "Star Children" at the Bradbury Art Museum, a Sumi Fusion mokuhanga exhibition in Nara, Japan, and a commissioned print for the Des Moines Art Center (2022).
Garcia serves on the International Mokuhanga Association's 2025-2027 international board and appeared on The Unfinished Print podcast in a 2022 episode discussing his concept of "future nostalgia" in mokuhanga practice.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1985
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 2
Frequently Asked Questions
Matthew Willie Garcia is an American printmaker born in 1985 in California and currently based in Kansas City, Missouri, whose practice extends mokuhanga into the realms of projection-mapped animation, large-scale installation, and what he calls "4D Printmaking." His work explores ideas of queer quantum mechanics, intersectional existence, and speculative science-fiction identity narratives through color abstraction, making him one of the more conceptually adventurous artists working in the contemporary mokuhanga field.
Matthew Willie Garcia was active born in 1985. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Matthew Willie Garcia's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Matthew Willie Garcia's prints frequently feature abstract, washi.
