(MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN) – Museum of Wisconsin Art proudly presents the work of Milwaukee-based artist Chad Alexander Matha in the exhibition “Everything to Build With.” On view at MOWA | DTN inside Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel, the show runs from December 5, 2025 through March 1, 2026. “Everything to Build With” transforms found and readymade objects into vibrant two- and three-dimensional works that explore identity, memory, and meaning.
Through years of scouring thrift stores and salvage spaces for industrial materials and overlooked objects, Matha has built a vast studio “catalog” that anchors his creative process. By combining these materials—plywood, bungee cords, buckets, and more—with craft-based processes such as knitting, sewing, and weaving, Matha constructs visual narratives that connect the personal and the universal.
“Matha’s approach to artmaking builds on the legacy of early twentieth-century artists who explored the boundary between art and life by incorporating everyday objects into mixed-media assemblages,” said Thomas Szolwinski, Associate Curator of Architecture and Design at MOWA. “What once challenged long-standing artistic canons—such as oil painting and figural sculpture—now becomes, in Matha’s hands, a celebration of the inherent beauty and expressive potential of ordinary materials.”
His work often draws from lived experience and pivotal moments. In We Grew Flowers in the Baseball Diamond Matha reflects on the memory of first revealing his sexual orientation to a childhood friend. Working with a multitude of different materials, literally “everything to build with”—language found on a thrifted yardstick—Matha transforms the overlooked and discarded into bold, unexpected stories.
“The work is deceptively straightforward,” said MOWA’s Deputy Director Dr. Jane Aspinwall. “The viewer recognizes individual everyday objects but simultaneously experiences them as parts of an integrated sculptural whole full of new meaning—that balance transforms cultural remnants into a vehicle for Matha’s personal expression.”
Matha lives and works in Milwaukee and recently received his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. “Everything to Build With” is on view at MOWA | DTN inside Saint Kate—The Arts Hotel in downtown Milwaukee from December 5, 2025 through March 1, 2026. MOWA will host an Opening Party on December 5 at 5:00 followed by an Artist Talk with Matha beginning at 6:00.