Tony Matelli: Displacement Map

Andréhn-Schiptjenko Paris presents Displacement Map a new solo exhibition with New York based artist Tony Matelli. The exhibition, the 8th with the gallery and the second one in Paris, features recent works shown for the first time, among these, an extraordinary life-sized self-portrait and a series of Arrangements, polychrome bronze bouquets of inverted flowers as well as a number of paintings.

Matelli’s perspectival reorientations of objects and ideas are most felt in his Arrangement series, where commonplace bouquets of flowers are upended and reified into miraculous and meticulously constructed sculptures. These works – comprising kaleidoscopic tulips, delicate rubber band-bound lilies, potted orchids, and vibrant tropical and wildflowers – have been transformed into traditional cast bronze and exquisitely painted. The works, often resting upon a single petal, bear no load from their gravitational sublimation; almost as images or ideas, these sculptures are reinstated upon the pedestal as if the laws of nature containing them were intact—yet inverted—around them.