Image: M+B, Los Angeles
M+B is spotlighting Matthew Porter’s long-running 'Flying Cars' series, a body of work that turns everyday streets into scenes of cinematic unreality. According to the gallery’s material, the images depict vintage American muscle cars suspended in midair, with the illusion built through photography rather than digital manipulation. The presentation centers on Porter’s blend of nostalgia, spectacle and carefully staged fiction.
The gallery describes the project as the result of more than a decade of work. Porter begins each image with photography, drawing and planning, then builds the final picture through multiple exposures, overlays and hand-built compositions. The result is a photograph that sits between documentation and invention, using the medium’s traditional authority to produce scenes that feel at once familiar and impossible. M+B frames that tension as central to the series.
The 'Flying Cars' works draw on the mythology of the American automobile, particularly 1960s and 1970s muscle cars. In the gallery text, those cars appear above quiet intersections, suburban streets and city skylines, creating a contrast between motion and stillness, mass culture and private memory. The imagery is linked to the broader visual language of film and to a willingness to suspend disbelief, with the photographs deliberately echoing that kind of cinematic effect.
A work titled 'Juniper Drive', dated 2025, is identified in the gallery’s email as an archival pigment print measuring 35 1/2 x 46 1/4 inches. Another work, 'Skyview', is listed as a 2026 archival pigment print in the artist’s frame, measuring 34 x 42 1/2 inches. A third image, 'Val Vista', is dated 2024 and described as an archival pigment print measuring 40 3/8 x 49 5/8 inches. The gallery’s note invites inquiries about availability.
Porter’s exhibition history at M+B is also part of the institutional context surrounding the series. The gallery identifies recent solo exhibitions by the artist at M+B, including 'Bright Sun Sours' and 'Skyline Vista'. It also notes that Porter’s work has appeared in thematic exhibitions at institutions including the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the International Center of Photography Museum in New York.
The artist’s background and broader practice are outlined in the gallery material as well. Porter is identified as having received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Bard-ICP. The same material says he has also undertaken curatorial projects, co-edited Blind Spot magazine Issue 45, and written for publications including Triple Canopy, Blind Spot, Artforum and Canteen. His work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cincinnati Art Museum and the UBS Art Collection, among others.
M+B lists its Los Angeles address as 612 North Almont Drive and includes contact information for inquiries. The gallery’s site also references other upcoming projects, including Leo Mock: 'You want to hear echoes' and Daniela Kum, but the current focus of the email is Porter’s 'Flying Cars' series and the way it continues to build photographic fiction from American car culture.
