Ever since I saw that Tony Matelli is having a solo show at Maruani Mercier in Knokke, Belgium, I've struggled to find an angle from my usual painting-buff standpoint. But the more I thought about the show, the more I realized how much there is to say about these works, and how timely and relevant his practice, technique, and concepts have become over time.
I’ll start with a short story—after seeing Matelli’s work only online and unsure what I was actually looking at, I finally saw one of the Roman stone sculptures with fruits many years ago in Miami. I eventually walked away thinking there must be a system for who replaces the half-peeled bananas and when, so they're always at the same level of ripeness. Yes, Matelli’s craft is on such a level that even with the naked eye, I couldn’t tell the bananas are painted bronze! And that was the part I wanted to avoid focusing on too much in my review.
We live in a high-tech world where pretty much anything can be fabricated, so talking about technical exceptionalism feels somewhat redundant. But that got me thinking about how these pieces feel timely in the context of AI photo/video/information overproduction and mirage. It feels like the only sphere where our perception and trust are safe is the real, three-dimensional world. But looking at this exhibition, I’d say that Matelli went ahead of his time and hijacked that sphere with his practice.
Beyond that, meaningful ideas lie behind these mind-bending objects; his famous Weeds series comments on how we view nature based on taste, convenience, and preference. Further on, the upside-down flower pots and bouquets, fittingly titled Arrangements, seem to comment on how we treat living organisms for our liking and comfort, cutting up or potting plants. Matelli extends this idea in his full-body self-portrait from 2022, in which the artist, dressed in a studio outfit, stands in a gallery space with his head cut off and smacked upside down on his neck. The key moment of this absurd work is his content expression, unbothered by the decapitation.
Finally, this idea of messing up reality beyond the borders of common sense and the laws of physics culminates in The Eggs series, where chicken eggs are displayed uncracked but with their insides standing on the outside. Even more so, the showpiece Sideways Dinner, 2026, suspends the aftermath of dinner in the air, as if someone flipped the table and it then disappeared mid-air. On the one hand, packed with different elements, materials, and substances meticulously recreated in bronze, polyurethane, stainless steel, and epoxy, this piece showcases skill and technique. But it’s also an in-your-face exposure to decadence as a standard that underlines our increasingly dubious lives. —Saša Bogojev
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