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(Philadelphia, PA) — Woodmere is pleased to announce a new collaboration with Canadian visual and conceptual artist Matthew Olivier, bringing five interpretations from his ambitious Codex Algorithm project into dialogue with works from Woodmere’s permanent collection. The series Look Longer: Codex Algorithm at Woodmere | The Woodmere Manuscript can be enjoyed from anywhere digitally or in person at Woodmere.
Olivier selected five works from Woodmere’s collection and created a thought-provoking synopsis of each as part of Codex Algorithm, the major conceptual artwork of his career, a genre-defying investigation of images, attention, and the systems that shape what we see. Woodmere has installed tablet computers positioned beside the selected works in its galleries, inviting visitors to watch, listen, and engage with Olivier’s essays and films while viewing the original artworks. This collaboration takes the experience beyond the digital realm, extending the project into the museum itself.
The installations explore an unexpected connection between the art of the past and today’s algorithmic feeds. Across centuries, artists and images have competed for the viewer’s attention, consciously or unconsciously influencing where the eye lands and what image comes next. Codex Algorithm considers historical paintings as predecessors to the contemporary feed where images are selected, framed, and circulated within systems designed to capture attention.
“We are delighted to invite Matthew Olivier into a conversation with works that have been part of Woodmere’s collection and our visitors’ experience for generations,” said Bill Valerio, Woodmere CEO and Director. “Matthew asks us to look at familiar works in an unfamiliar way, to consider not only what an image depicts, but how and why it captures our attention. Bringing Codex Algorithm into the galleries creates a compelling bridge between art history and the visual environment we inhabit every day.”
At the center of Codex Algorithm is a deliberately constructed narrator, a synthesized voice that functions as a mask over top of Olivier’s own script and voice acting. Through this recurring “voice in my head,” Olivier raises questions about authorship, mediation, technology, and the increasingly blurred boundary between human and machine-generated communication.
Since its launch in 2023, Codex Algorithm has unfolded as a long-form sequence of algorithmic essays, short films, and writings created entirely by Olivier. Reaching hundreds of millions of viewers each year across digital platforms, the project operates simultaneously as artwork, experiment, and critique. Olivier treats the algorithmic feed itself as an artistic medium, one that can be approached with the same intentionality historically associated with oil paint, canvas, paper, photography, and film.
Woodmere’s collaboration with Matthew Olivier, along with the program, An Evening with Matthew Olivier: Exploring the Codex Algorithm, has been made possible through the generous support of Dennis Alter.
An Evening with Matthew Olivier: Exploring the Codex Algorithm
On October 28 from 5–7 p.m., Woodmere will host Matthew Olivier for an in-person conversation about Codex Algorithm, his installations at Woodmere, and the ideas behind his practice.
Olivier will join Woodmere CEO and Director Bill Valerio for an intimate discussion exploring the project’s relationship with art history and contemporary media, as well as the implications of making and experiencing art in an age when attention itself has become a commodity.
The conversation will be followed by a book signing of Olivier’s new book, The Art of Reading Art: Understanding What Makes Great Art Great. The book will be available for purchase on-site during the event.
About Matthew Olivier
Matthew Olivier is a visual artist, author, and storyteller from Toronto, Canada, whose work brings classical technique into dialogue with present-day culture. Born February 1, 1991, in Toronto, he holds major practices in painting and writing. His painting practice works in the lineage of European figurative painting — rooted in the study of art history and foundational technique, shaped by close observation and formal discipline. The paintings are restrained in gesture but open to feeling; grounded in structure, but always looking outward.
Since launching his professional career in 2020, Olivier has moved between classical painting and a modern narrative practice. Paintings are released individually and acquired directly from the studio; each work is documented, authenticated, and offered by inquiry.
In 2023, he launched Codex Algorithm, the major conceptual artwork of his career — a long-form sequence of algorithmic essays, short films and writings voiced by his recurring narrator, “the voice in my head.” The work claims the algorithmic feed as an artistic medium — in the lineage of oil paint, canvas, paper, photograph, and film — and reaches hundreds of millions of viewers per year. Its commissions and collaborations include the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Government of Flanders, a Trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, M+ Hong Kong, the Munch Museum in Oslo, MSK Gent, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, Palazzo Maffei in Verona, and Avant Arte, alongside the fashion houses Dior and BOSS and the independent game studio thatgamecompany, for whom the Starry Night essay was commissioned for Sky: Children of the Light.
The conceptual foundation of the work is the lineage of Marcel Duchamp: the artist’s gesture of selection and reframing — taking an existing object, placing it under a new title and point of view, and creating a new thought for that object. Codex Algorithm extends the readymade’s logic into the architecture of the contemporary feed: paintings from the historical record are chosen, reframed, and read for the thought they make possible inside the same attention economy as everything else competing for the human eye. The claim is formal — the algorithmic feed as an artistic medium, after oil paint, canvas, paper, photograph, and film — and the essays are artworks made in that medium. This is a conceptual art practice conducted in public: art made in the feed, not content about art.
His first book, The Art of Reading Art: Understanding What Makes Great Art Great, publishes with Smith Street Books on October 6, 2026 and is carried by retailers worldwide.
He lives and works in Toronto.
About Woodmere
Nestled in Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill neighborhood, Woodmere offers a unique museum experience centered on the art and artists of Philadelphia. Vibrant exhibitions explore the achievements and social ideas of Philadelphia’s artists in the broader context of American art; Woodmere prioritizes diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in its collecting, programming, and admission policies.
In November 2025, Woodmere opened a second site, Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art and Education, alongside its existing Charles Knox Smith Hall. Marking Woodmere’s most significant expansion since its founding in 1910, the opening of the second site adds 14 new galleries showcasing Woodmere’s permanent collection, featuring American Impressionism, figurative arts, modernism, and Philadelphia’s jewelry arts. The expansion also introduces a children’s art and education studio, along with new public spaces for events and programs.
[image credit: Gabriel Schachinger, Sweet Reflections, 1886. Oil on canvas, 51 x 31 in. (Woodmere Art Museum: Bequest of Charles Knox Smith)]
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Media Contact
For media inquiries, please contact:
Amy Ferracci, Woodmere Director of Marketing & Communications aferracci@woodmereartmuseum.org | 215-805-8515
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