Tony Martolock (°1984, Palmyra, United States) makes paintings, drawings and sculptures. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, Martolock often creates work using creative game tactics, but these are never permissive. Play is a serious matter: during the game, different rules apply than in everyday life and even everyday objects undergo transubstantiation.
His paintings are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in painting. By taking daily life as subject matter while commenting on the everyday aesthetic of middle class values, he makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics and technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor.
His works are characterised by the use of everyday objects in an atmosphere of middleclass mentality in which recognition plays an important role. With Plato’s allegory of the cave in mind, his works references post-colonial theory as well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance against the logic of the capitalist market system.
His works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By focusing on techniques and materials, he considers making art a craft which is executed using clear formal rules and which should always refer to social reality.
His works are notable for their perfect finish and tactile nature. This is of great importance and bears witness to great craftsmanship. Tony Martolock currently lives and works in Philadelphia.
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