Mathew Cerletty, In the Beginning, 2025. Oil on linen, 28 × 35 in. (71.12 × 88.90 cm)
Mathew Cerletty
in conversation with
Mamie Tinkler
Thursday, December 11, 6–7 pm
Karma
22 East 2nd Street
New York
Read more and register here
Karma presents a conversation between Mathew Cerletty and Mamie Tinkler on the occasion of Cerletty’s exhibition End of the Line at 22 East 2nd Street, New York.
Mathew Cerletty paints hyperreal depictions of signage, commercial tableaux, and everyday items with a precision that veers into the uncanny. At first glance, his paintings appear seamless, almost digital, but closer inspection reveals traces of the artist’s hand that attest to his dedication to traditional craft. Working in oil, the artist challenges the medium’s historical associations with “high” culture by elevating the supposedly banal objects that surround us, such as boxes and outlets, to subjects worthy of portraiture. Although consistent in his exacting technique, choice of medium, and approach to developing images and groupings, Cerletty composes singular works into installations that highlight the formal and conceptual connections between seemingly disparate canvases. While the subject matter draws clear inspiration from sources in popular and commercial culture, the artist eschews the mass-legibility associated with Pop, favoring an irreverence and delight in contradictions that confounds clear signification. Cerletty lives in Brooklyn.
Mamie Tinkler is an artist who lives in New York City. She received a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from Hunter College, both in New York. Her work was recently included in Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2024). Recent solo exhibitions include A Troubling (2023) at Ulterior Gallery, New York (reviewed in The New York Times); and Yorick in Space (2023) at Tops Gallery, Memphis. She is represented by Ulterior Gallery.
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Mathew Cerletty, True Believer Book Launch
at Karma Bookstore, New York
Wednesday, July 12, 6–8 pm
136 East 3rd Street
New York, NY 10009
Karma will host a book launch for Mathew Cerletty, True Believer published by Karma.
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Mathew Cerletty, Fuel 5G, 2022, oil on linen, 72 × 58½ inches; 182.88 × 148.59 cm
A Conversation: Mathew Cerletty & Naomi Fry
at Karma, Los Angeles
Friday November 18, 6pm
7351 Santa Monica Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90046
On the occasion of Mathew Cerletty, True Believer, Karma is pleased to invite you to a conversation to celebrate the exhibition. Join artist Mathew Cerletty and writer Naomi Fry as they discuss pop culture and painting.
Read more and register HERE
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Bashful Lilac, 2020,
oil on linen,
51¼ × 51¼ inches; 130.2 × 130.2 cm
Mathew Cerletty
Full Length Mirror
Organized by Rob Teeters
November 14, 2020—May 22, 2021
The Power Station
3816 Commerce St
Dallas, TX 75226
thepowerstationdallas.com
“Artists paint themselves, viewers see themselves – this is not related” – Gene Beery
The world has been confined to DIY hermetically sealed chambers for months on end. Packaged and pickled, we continue to wait out the unknown. In his studio, Mathew Cerletty has continued work on a series of paintings of idealized household objects, scaled up and isolated on single color backgrounds. His subjects float, concentrated, preserved and contaminant free, in a purified space that only leaves room for the viewer.
Approaching a Cerletty painting often begins with humor and recognition, but one quickly realizes the exchange is not entirely stress-free. We understand and know these objects yet they continually resist our apprehension. According to Cerletty, “I paint them in the hope that they can evolve and remain interesting for different reasons over time.” It’s a strategy that’s proved effective as quarantine hit and symbols take on new meaning.
As looming questions of interpretation draw us in, often until nose is pressed to canvas, we can steady ourselves through craft and technique, and seeing that yes, this picture is painted. The production of these images is refined on a molecular level. Thin layers of paint are applied over months in a seeming attempt to blot out any light from behind the curtain, capturing us on a threshold that Michael Fried cites as “an imaginary boundary between the world of the painting and that of the beholder.”1
The recapitulating attempts to penetrate Cerletty’s impervious wall are perpetual, igniting a tête-à-tête whose only conclusion is layered multivalency. But in the sincerity of painstaking craft there’s warmth; this is a game that wants to be played. Cerletty’s careful attention conveys significance and his subjects always return a scrutinizing gaze, seeking connection with a viewer who might catalyze the work’s completion.
Mathew Cerletty (b. 1980, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions include: Karma, Standard (Oslo), Office Baroque, Blum & Poe, Algus Greenspon, Team Gallery and Rivington Arms. Group exhibitions include: “Flatlands”, Whitney Museum of American Art; “Sputterances”, Metro Pictures, organized by Sanya Kantarovsky, and “The Painter of Modern Life” curated by Bob Nickas, Anton Kern Gallery, New York.
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Mathew Cerletty, Kohler, 2007, Graphite on paper, 15 1⁄4 × 19 5⁄8 inches
Mathew Cerletty: Full Length Mirror
Organized by Rob Teeters
The Power Station
Forthcoming
3816 Commerce Street
Dallas, TX 75226
powerstationdallas.com
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Mathew Cerletty, Crying As Architecture, 2019, oil on linen, 52 × 40 inches
Darren Bader, crying as architecture
Mathew Cerletty in Words
October 11–November 26, 2019
Alexander Berggruen Gallery
1018 Madison Avenue, Floor 3
New York, NY 10075
www.alexanderberggruen.com
John Baldessari, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bates, Alighiero Boetti, Margaret Bourke-White, Georges Braque, Mathew Cerletty, Walker Evans, Danny Fox, Charles Gaines, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, On Kawara, Paul Klee, Joseph Kosuth, Barbara Kruger, Tony Lewis, Kerry James Marshall, Ryan Morozowski, Yoshitomo Nara, Ed Ruscha, Emily Mae Smith, Cy Twombly, Lawrence Weiner, Jonas Wood, and Christopher Wool.
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Mathew Cerletty in conversation with Lucy Kim in Boston University’s Tuesday Night MFA Lecture Series
Tuesday, October 29, 7:30 pm
Boston University
Room 410, 808 Commonwealth Avenue
Brookline, MA 02446
bu.edu
Hosted by the graduate programs in Painting and Sculpture at Boston University, the Tuesday Night MFA Lecture series brings practicing artists to campus to present their work. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Mathew Cerletty (CFA’02) utilizes a hyper-realistic approach to painting that marries the quotidian and the surreal within a range of motifs and subjects. While an undergraduate at Boston University, Cerletty developed the ability to carefully paint the figure in the academic, representational mode. Today, he has developed a practice in which virtuosic yet slightly uncanny depictions of human subjects, corporate logos, and domestic objects are rendered in high-key color and with flat precision. Pervading Cerletty’s paintings is a deadpan sense of humor tempered by a disarming sincerity towards his seemingly banal subjects.
His work has been exhibited in museums including Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego; and at galleries including Rivington Arms, Team Gallery, Plum and Poe in New York, and the Boston University Art Galleries. He is represented by Office Baroque in Brussels, Belgium and Standard in Oslo, Norway.
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Mathew Cerletty, Print, 2018, inkjet and watercolor on Epson Hot Press Bright 330gsm paper, 18 × 18 inches; 45.7 × 45.7 cm
Mathew Cerletty, Marley Freeman and Nicolas Party in 2019 White Columns Benefit Auction Exhibition
May 18–May 29, 2019
Auction: May 29 at 6:30 pm
91 Horatio Street
New York, NY 10014
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Mathew Cerletty,
Green Thumb,
2018,
oil on linen,
43 × 41 inches; 16.9 × 16.1 cm
Mathew Cerletty
Whiskers
May 4–November 5, 2019
Standard (Oslo)
Waldemar Thranes Gate 86 C
0175 Oslo, Norway
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