'Venus (Oranges)' emerges from Tony Matelli’s ongoing search for the magic in trompe-l’oeil realism. It comes from a series of works that feature garden-store and cemetery sculptures bedecked with lifelike fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs, as well as exacting recreations of grimy, graffitied mirrors. Full of technical feats and imaginative leaps, the works showcase an evolving, open-ended quest to, as he says, “reweird” ordinary life—to discover the uncanny life of familiar objects and scenarios.

Born in 1971 in Chicago, Matelli is a New York-based sculptor known for his painstakingly detailed, resemblant sculptures. Concerned with how we define ourselves as human beings, what constitutes meaningful relationships, and the transience of life, Matelli chronicles these ideas through a playful lens whilst pushing the boundaries of his medium. The result is a subversive dialogue that deepens the conversation surrounding the possibilities of sculpture. Matelli's work has been internationally exhibited and collected in important institutions including Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden, Museum Vorlinden, Netherlands, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, and The Davis Museum at Wellesley College, MA.