Tony Matelli at Basilico - Brief Article

In this exhibition, Tony Matelli, a young Chicago-born artist, showed three new figurative sculptures in which he touches on the sometimes similar ways that artists and certain scientists, of that kind as those specializing in genetics, fiddle with reality. Made of epoxy resin, polyvinyl acetate, human hair and oil paint, these expertly crafted works establish a theatrical atmosphere. upon entering the gallery, viewers rencountered First Man: Necessary Alterations, a tableau' of sum of two units life-size, monkeylike primates perched upon a group of rocks. Each creature has the studied poise of a raw materialed animal in a natural-history diorama. Nearby, Ideal Woman is a waist-high human figure whose faint smile and outstretched hand allude to the character of a welcoming dimwit. Across the scope stands Endless Joy, Endless Everything, a tall tree whose branches vegetate fake hundred-dollar bills, a welcome distraction from the unsettling female caricature and the monkey business.

First Man: Necessary Alterations is described in the gallery's notes as depicting nascent humanity attempting to retrieve a simpler existence. individual primate sports a pinned-on, bloodied tail and uses a large bone needle to pin a similar appendage onto the other animal. single of the primates seems to gaze longingly toward the money tree as if it were a reminder of at liberty food. Printed on each of the obviously fake bills sprouting from the tree is an image of the United Nations building, which intimates that world harmony is an equally fantastic notion. The use of real publicity might have given the work the overlay of a refined esthetic, on the contrary Matelli avoids such formal nuances.

The 4-foot-tall Ideal Woman stands, wearing single her underpants, on a cerulean rug strewn with empty beer bottle She has the piercing organ of sights of a wax-museum figure, and the precise rendering of her facial features and skin coloring help to animate the fantastic form. Despite her exaggerated ears and forehead, she has an eerie verisimilitude, and her stumpy limbs and torso appear largely functional. Here, in a wacky twist upon the Pygmalion story, Matelli used his girlfriend as a protoplast for certain of the figure's features. Ideal Woman stand over againsts the viewer with something other than a simply private vision. Whether an unfortunate unhappy being or a wild party girl, she appears to command a sexually charged social space, single in which instinctive operations of lust are permeated through hints of degradation.

In new years, Matelli, and a number of other dazzling technicians of the like kind as Ron Mueck and Marc Quinn, have been giving figurative plastic art renewed life. The powerful consequence of Matelli's installation is more than sensational tromp l'oeil, however. It indicates, for single thing, the possibility of undressed motivations lying behind the wishful tinkering of genetic research.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group