Tony Matelli

About

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is proud to present Tony Matelli’s sixth solo show at the gallery, celebrating two decades of collaboration with the artist. The opening takes place on Friday February 1, 2019 between 5-8 pm and coincides with the opening of the gallery’s new space at Linnégatan 31 in Stockholm.

Matelli works in a variety of sculptural techniques and materials, his œuvre displaying an uncanny fusion of conceptual clarity and technical breadth. Many issues of his generation — alienation, ambivalence, and decadence — manifest themselves directly in his work. His sculptures possess a concision and frankness that can simultaneously seem crass and profound. There is also an element of provocation; a protest against playing by the universally accepted rules or conventions that exist as an inseparable part of the world that surrounds us. His sculptures can best be described as anti-monuments, re-interpreting the tradition of hyperrealism in American sculpture.

For this exhibition Matelli has produced extraordinary new works that further develop some of his recent themes, exploring entropy in various forms. Using shapes from classical sculpture, with its connotations of history, culture and class, artificially aging them through various forms of distress, and bedecking them with hyperrealistic perishables – strawberries, romaine, a hot-dog sandwich cast in painted bronze – results in something that looks very old acting as support for something superbly fresh. Made of materials that do not age the works relate to both eternal youth and the passage of time. The duality is poetic but also formal.