Ailanthus, 2020 Color photographs (7), Fuji Crystal Archive paper 7 x 5” each; Sun, 2020 PVC film (3) 7 x 5” each
Measures, 2020 woodblock print on Stonehenge cotton rag paper 44 x 11”
Measures, 2020 Eastern white pine, latex paint (Benjamin Moore ‘Abstracta’), paste wax 12 x 3.5 x 1.5”
Installation view
Ailanthus, 2020 Ailanthus Altissima seeds Dimensions variable; Omar Berrada – Clonal Hum, 2020 5 x 7” 32 pages

Matthew Schrader’s work for Michel Obultra 3 includes 2 objects based on standard English units of measure, and 7 photographs of ailanthus altissima, commonly known as the Tree of Heaven. Ailanthus was introduced to North America by Philadelphia naturalist William Hamilton in 1784. Imported as a decorative plant, it is now considered an invasive species. Schrader’s work is a synthesis of dual meanings of naturalization: how displaced species proliferate in new environments; and the technical and ideological process of rendering social structures invisible.

Matthew Schrader is an artist based in New York. He received an MFA in Sculpture from the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Schrader’s work has appeared in exhibitions at Gertrude, The Abrons Art Center, MINI/Goethe-Institut Curatorial Residencies Ludlow 38, P!, U.S. Blues, Room East, MoMA PS1, Carl Louie, Regina Rex, Cleopatra’s Greenpoint, Metropolitan Structures and The Richmond Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Western Michigan. Schrader is a recipient of The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, and has previously been an artist in residence at The Abrons Art Center, New York and SOMA, Mexico DF.

Omar Berrada is a writer and curator whose work focuses on the politics of translation and intergenerational transmission. His writing is included in The University of California Book of North African Literature and Poetic Justice: An Anthology of Contemporary Moroccan Poetry, among others. Currently living in New York, he teaches at The Cooper Union where he co-organizes the IDS Lecture Series.