check die link:

 http://www.mathewcerletty.com

 MATHEW CERLETTY GIVES THE WORLD A COKE

Mathew Cerletty's early hyper-realist paintings and drawings give off an unnerving impression of sociopathic slickness and seething sexual violence. His extraordinary skill as a draftsman enables him to create chilling scenes whose cool, still, surfaces rarely provide direct clues to why one can't shake a sense of horror. Like the literature of Philip K. Dick and Bret Easton Ellis, Cerletty portrays a hyper-ordered, strictly structured, glossy world populated by neatly groomed, attractive and vacant people in bright, patterned surroundings. He often paints himself, but with an eerily impassive expression, as if he were painting a handsome, intimidating reserved stranger. The hum of white noise seems to emanate from his images.

 http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/art_news/an_interview_with_mathew_cerletty

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 ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: Are your paintings influenced or inspired by literature or critical theory about gender?

MATHEW CERLETTY: In my early work I'd often start with a title. Many were taken from or inspired by something I read, usually just a particular phrase that attracted me. Recently I've done a series of drawings that were sort of inspired by Moby Dick. I picked up an old copy of Moby Dick and painted out everything but the title on the front cover, matching the jaundiced beige of the old book pages. So it's this beige block that says 'Moby Dick' in black Times font. The drawings are basically the same, but they say 'Diet Coke' instead. What's gender theory?

AFH: Gender theory is academic thinking about gender and the relationship between biological sexual identity and culture. A number of your earlier images involved you painting or drawing your face on top of pretty girls' bodies. Were those referencing theories on the mutability of gender identity or was there something else going on?

MC: I just wanted to be one of the girls from a fashion magazine.

AFH: So, for you is part of the pleasure of painting about wish-fulfillment, not so much representing the world as creating one?

MC: I guess drawing myself as a confused 17-year-old female model was about wish-fulfillment, but without the fulfillment. The pleasure comes from producing work honestly.

AFH: What would make the work dishonest?

MC: Honesty and efficiency, you know, I have to believe in what I'm doing and a big part of that is not dressing it up.

AFH: Why did you select Moby Dick as the subject of a painting?

MC: I was kicking around a few scenarios involving people and Diet Coke, but I realized Diet Coke was all I wanted to say and I couldn't justify a narrative or flashy technique. For me, that would've been dishonest and inefficient.

 AFH: So, you're not advertising or promoting anything. You're just declaring that it's something you're thinking about and proposing it as something the viewer consider too?

MC: Really the subject is Diet Coke, which I have recently started drinking with great enthusiasm. I just took visual cues from a copy of Moby Dick that I altered. I selected Diet Coke for its character, and I didn't use the usual design because I wanted it to be more direct.

AFH: How would you describe the character of Diet Coke?

MC: Down to earth, extrovert, optimistic, delicious. Diet Coke's character is like a stereotype of America. That's why I picked it, but it's intended to function as a non sequitur.

AFH: Even intended as a non sequitur, there are a lot of probable readings in your juxtaposition of two major defining American icons - Coke and Melville. How do you tend to react to critical interpretation of your work? Do you think critics get it or are they usually pretty off?

MC: The juxtaposition of Diet Coke and Moby Dick was an amusing part of my process, and I'm very curious about that sort of interaction, like The Great Bear by Simon Patterson or Robert Gober. I'm just starting to figure out how to bring my particular sense of poetry to this type of interplay. As for critical interpretation of my work, I often find it helpful since I tend to be more instinctual.

AFH: Your style has changed radically lately. What inspired the transition to looser, less polished work?

MC: I graduated from Boston University in 2002. It's a very traditional painting school. So I was just using what I learned and doing my thing, painting the figure. I was into David Bowie, David Lynch, Kubrick, John
Currin, fashion photography, stuff like that. Over the past couple years I've discovered recent art history, Johns, Nauman, Guston, Polke and I've been immersed in the gallery scene. My interests and approach are changing and the work reflects that. Style isn't something I think about, but efficiency is, so recent work looks more matter of fact.

AFH: What do you want to be efficient at? Is painting like a tool for you to express what language can't?

MC: Sure, I use painting to express things that I can't in language. Every painter does that, but I wouldn't describe painting as a tool.

AFH: What do you love most and what distresses you about the contemporary art world?

MC: The contemporary art world isn't perfect, but it doesn't really sicken me. I love that I can make a living as an artist.

AFH: Do you feel that growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has as influenced your work or your approach to the New York art scene?

MC: Yes. I'm a midwesterner, friendly, straightforward, hard-working, stoic. I don't really identify with the New York art scene.

AFH: Sex, narcissism and violence always seemed under the surface of your earlier works. Do you think people have certain expectations of you before they meet you?

MC: I usually crack a sex, narcissism and violence joke to break the ice.

AFH: Have those expectations changed since you've started showing a new style of painting?

MC: I don't know. If anybody has these expectations they hide them and I'm grateful.

AFH: Do you people try to psychoanalyze you?

MC: Yes, they usually yell 'fag' out the window of a passing car.