TONY MATELLI

Tony Matelli (USA, 1971) – one of the most prominent and most promising American artists whose works reflect the subtle and ever-elusive combination of concept, contemporary technology, as well as the demanding attitude to technique and art in the best sense of the word.
Once an assistant to Jeff Koons, Tony Matelli looks at the experience he has gained from a new angle deeply feeling the burning issues of the day while at the same time preserving a serious attitude towards the quality of his work and demonstrating scrupulous attention to detail. Matelli’s work reaches beyond the boundaries of political correctness and the social conduct code. Every of his objects incorporates a provocation, a protest against playing by the commonly accepted rules, and aggression as an integral part of the surrounding world. He focuses on loneliness, desolation, degradation, defenselessness and, at the same time, resilience and resistance to unfortunate circumstances.
While demonstrating an acute personal response to basic emotions, Tony Matelli is ironic about himself and smiles at the absurdity of what’s happening around him. He is set on questioning everything what many thought unshakable; on striking the right visual forms to impart subtle philosophical concepts. The Moscow exhibition showcases the artist’s objects of the past five years and the brand new works which will see light for the first time. The laws of physics are no longer evident in Matelli’s works. Challenging the laws of gravitation, he utterly readjusts the optics thereby giving us a new picture of the objects and phenomena that surround us and transforming the existent reality into a new one.
Tony Matelli’s works have been on display in a large number of prestigious museums and galleries all over the world and are part of permanent collections in a variety of world famous museums: