Featuring: Matt Albano
Director & Editor: Austin Tsung Fu Chang
Cinematography: Yusuke Sato
Re-recording Mixer: Romain Sturma
A day in the life of contemporary abstract expressionist painter Matt Albano, filmed at his Long Island City studio.
We observe Matt Albano at his studio and are viscerally drawn into his plainspoken descriptions of the creative process. We experience the physicality of his approach as he slaps color on canvas, each splash of paint considered preordained. Matt talks without pretension about what inspires him: the nightmare of colors of his dreams and the people and artifacts of his New York life: among them a woman who lives under the 7 train in Sunnyside, a collection of parking tickets he has accumulated on his car, and, a cartoon dinosaur that evokes his childhood growing up in 1990s.
My approach as a filmmaker was to step back and follow Matt as he follows his own impulses, taking off in random directions. I wanted to pay tribute to Matt’s staccato spontaneous style, punctuated by jokes, often at his own expense, and his wry observations of life’s absurdities.
© Austin Tsung Fu Chang 2021