Tony Matelli’s work constantly requires the viewer to reorient their understanding of the world. In his ongoing series of weed sculptures, he prods the viewer to question their understandings of perception, time, and beauty. Cast in bronze and painted to look like hyper-realistic weeds growing out of walls and floors, Matelli’s sculptures add an unwelcome sense of abandonment and untidiness to the spaces they inhabit. Rebellious and thought-provoking, they are a sly reminder of the uncontrollable forces in the natural world. Matelli’s work is in numerous public collections, including Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills; FLAG Art Foundation, New York; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum; Fundacion La Caixa Madrid; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden. A mid-career survey, Tony Matelli: A Human Echo, premiered at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, in 2012 and traveled to the Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway.
