In keeping with Matelli’s ongoing themes of desolation, panic, ambivalence, despair and occasionally hope, his anti-monuments coalesce to present a central theme: the indeterminable.
Time marches on, deteriorating some things, giving new life to others, or leaving some in perpetual limbo. Whether referencing 17th century Vanitas painting or a graffitied surface, Matelli refers to a range of visual stimuli without prizing one over the next. He forces a reckoning with the everyday, mundane object through his fastidiously rendered, hyperrealist artworks revealing something potentially profound.
Thriving on dualities, extreme opposites, and exhaustive tension Matelli’s work revels in conceptual contradictions. Yet through this complexity he maintains communicative clarity, giving the viewer a direct and honest response.
Tony Matelli, born in 1971 in Chicago, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His upcoming solo exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien will be held in conjunction with the Falkenrot Prize 2011 which had been awarded to Tony Matelli earlier this year.