WORKERFILE: Buried Alive by Matt Schuster

For graphic artist Matt Schuster, WORKERFILE is more than a project. It is a reclamation. After decades working as an art director and believing that a career in graphic design would offer stability and a dependable creative path, Schuster found himself feeling increasingly distant from the strange, experimental, personal work that first drew him toward the arts. WORKERFILE is his effort to claw back that part of himself, the one that thrives in uncertainty and embraces the messy joy of making something unusual.

The series, including pieces such as Buried Alive, Don’t Touch Me, and Before I Kill Again, represents five years of obsessive exploration. Schuster has been carving out a visual language built entirely on black and white, abstraction, patterns and noise. His process is a collision of analogue and digital techniques. Hand painted textures are combined with photography, vector fragments and found objects, producing compositions that feel both mechanical and deeply human. They pulse with tension, as if they are revealing something uncomfortable beneath their surfaces.

Schuster describes the work as a continuation of a lifelong fascination with the uneasy and the uncanny. Black and white reduces the image to its purest form and forces attention toward structure and pattern. In the absence of colour, the viewer is pushed into the dense noise and layered marks that make up each composition. This creates a sense of compression, even claustrophobia, which fits the themes of the series. The title Buried Alive captures that feeling of being overwhelmed by layers of work, pressure and identity, yet still clawing toward the surface.

After thirty years in graphic design, Schuster is now actively seeking collaborations that align with the tone of his work. He has a strong interest in partnering with musicians, writers and game creators who need artwork with a strange and unsettling edge. He sees WORKERFILE as a platform for reconnection, not only with his own artistic instincts but also with creative communities that thrive on risk and experimentation.

Schuster reflects on this phase of his career with refreshing honesty. For many designers who enter the field believing it provides a safer or more structured version of an artistic life, the realisation that something more personal has been lost can be difficult to confront. WORKERFILE is his answer to that. It is an ongoing attempt to take back the space for the type of work that once defined him, no matter how odd, abrasive or uncommercial it may appear.

Buried Alive, Don’t Touch Me, and Before I Kill Again are all digital collages created in 2025. They mark a turning point in the series and in Schuster’s commitment to pushing this monochrome, pattern-driven direction forward.

Artist links

Website
Bluesky