Anthony Mastromatteo Paintings

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly intricate trompe l'oeil oil paintings ranging in size from 7 x 5 inches to 48 x 36 inches. In supplement to the exhibition, Mastromatteo painted 10 pictographs on "Hello My Name Is" nametags and put them in plastic sleeves one would clip on their person for any kind of large function. There is always a bit of tongue and cheek...

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly ...

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly ...

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly intricate trompe l'oeil oil paintings ranging in size from 7 x 5 inches to 48 x 36 inches. In supplement to the exhibition, Mastromatteo painted 10 pictographs on the recognizable "Hello My Name Is" nametags and put them in plastic sleeves one would clip on their person for any kind of large function. There is always a bit of tongue and...

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly ...

Anthony Mastromatteo re-introduced himself to the Grenning Gallery with his 2023 exhibition "Hello, My Name Is: Anthony Mastromatteo." The works included in the show were incredibly intricate trompe l'oeil oil paintings ranging in size from 7 x 5 inches to 48 x 36 inches. In supplement to the exhibition, Mastromatteo painted 10 pictographs on "Hello My Name Is" nametags and put them in plastic sleeves one would clip on their person for any kind of large function. There is always a bit of tongue and cheek...

One of the most confounding paintings in this exhibition is “The Painting, As Seen by the Wall”. Mastromatteo depicts a bare canvas, framed in reverse, turned-around. He presents the...

"Being and Nothingness" is a 2023 trompe l'oeil modernist oil painting. Mastromatteo pays homage to Malevich’s black square, and even positions it at the top left quarter of the canvas. The modernist symbol is austere, and formidable, yet it lays flat on the two-dimensional plane. Outside the square, amidst a wall of white, are little butterflies. Their angled wings...

Continuing his affinity for Malevich’s geometric paragon is Felix Culpa or ‘Must be a Woe,” this time, in red. Three red squares hover above Christ suffering on the cross—one of the most recognizable images in art history—yet here, no wooden cross is in sight. Christ simply floats against a white wall. The three “Red Squares” map the edges of the invisible crucifix, and an old violin...

In the trompe l'oeil panel painting, "Wonder, or the Plane of the Invisible," a comic cut-out of Wonder Woman sits between two spatial planes—the top, very flat plane is cut out in the shape of a plane as a play Wonder Woman's famous "Invisible Plane." The silly way the comic book character would sit in an imaginary seat flying through the air would force the artist to wonder, “how do you represent an invisible plane”. Here, we see a bright blue canvas, sprinkled with glittery paillettes; an outline of an airplane beneath an outline of the word “SKY”, an infantile depiction of the sun made of masking tape, and finally, the hero, Wonder Woman, her comic clipping taped onto the invisible plane. A very believable, naturalist blue sky with puffy white clouds is visible through the letters and the invisible airplane. It feels like we can reach into the invisible plane to find the natural world…yet atop the plane is an old cartoon of the first female superhero. She overlaps the realistic atmosphere, and even casts a shadow onto it. The planet’s orbit is dedicated to the sun, and all living things need the light to survive…yet this most important element is made up of a crude array of tape strips, asymmetrical, and even torn in-half. This sun refers back to Pablo Picasso’s sun...

Framed Dimensions: 16 x 16.75 inches

"Lovely Mary Jane" is a Post-Modern painting inspired by The Bluest Eye by Toni Morison. Lovely Mary Jane is a candy wrapper, taped to a blue wall. It’s trash, glorified. But this is not a political statement about commercialism or recycling. This painting was inspired by one of the top 10 banned books across the country, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” which is about a young black girl who wishes she had blue eyes, an envy shaped from her love of her favorite candy, Mary Jane. It’s a heartbreaking notion caused by an ideal of beauty perpetuated by a marketing campaign for a sweet treat. Classical painting also hails a certain ideal of beauty… and one wouldn’t usually find something as insignificant as a candy wrapper as the focal point of their pièce de résistance. However, Mastromatteo is asking us to see that here is power in idealization, especially in something so seemingly throwaway. He’s prodding us to be more aware…to make people aware of the significance of the seemingly insignificant. The one power an artist possesses is that of forcing the viewer to look at something of his choosing…and in this case he’s asking us to look at something that may be garbage. Consider Maurizio Cattelan, whom in 2019 taped a banana to the wall with duct tape, and it later sold for $120,000…art forces the viewer to consider something that everyone is telling you to look at. Mastromatteo’s candy wrapper is taped up to the wall in a similar fashion as Cattelan’s banana…if we look long enough at the tape, we’ll notice it’s resemblance to the “not-equal” sign...

Is NOT is a present day vanitas still life. A meditation on the ephemerality of life and the things we hold dear. The fragility of the statement "time is not money" is represented in...

"Hello, My Name Is" is a trompe l'oeil oil painting of nametags and sharpie on blue background. Anthony Mastromatteo reintroduces himself in his first exhibition with the Grenning ...

"White Picket Fence (Aspirational Memoir)" is inspired by Toni Morison's The Bluest Eye. The focal point is a bright green square, encased with a picket- fence made of white tape. I...

An infinite #2 pencil is depicted within eight square trompe l'oeil floating frames on a blank background. "Ouroboros" refers to the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail, ...

"The Three Body Problem" is a pink comic book trompe l'oeil of a famous physics phenomenon. Mastromatteo creates a meditation on the "Three Body Pr...

Oil on Board

Oil on Linen on Panel