Constant Consciousness continues the artist Tony Matelli's dialogue with sculptural dark humor and verisimilitude. The sculpture consists of nine life-size, realistically painted and presented stamped-out cast brass cigarette butts, placed casually on the floor as if someone were chain smoking in one spot and lost in thought or conversation. The implied narrative is found in much of Matelli's work; sometimes overtly and sometimes much of it left to the viewer's imagination. The implicit sarcasm of Constant Consciousness is carefully balanced with a demure sense of casualness, playfulness and wit, with an added note of fetishism. Something so beautifully painted and cared for, whether tobacco or brass, would seem to inspire possessiveness. The sculpture is closely related to the artist's Squalor from 1995, which consisted of an aging, discarded apple core placed on the ground, sometimes with other bits of 'real' detritus surrounding it. To come upon Constant Consciousness in a room, especially a room with other larger or perhaps more 'important' works, one is reminded of the artist's sense of irony, subversiveness and not least, humility. As with much of his work, it "pushes the boundaries of convention, content and taste, meaning and material". It is however, also preoccupied with an inherent sense of humanness. Constant Consciousness was recently included in Needful Things: Recent Multiples at the Cleveland Museum, Cleveland, OH.

Tony Matelli has been included in numerous exhibitions, including The Ten Commandments, Hygiene Museum, Dresden, Germany, I Am The Walrus, curated by Jan Avgikos, Cheim & Read Gallery, NY, Five Billion Years, Swiss Institute, New York City, NY, The Uncanny, curated by Mike Kelley, Tate Liverpool, London, Metamorphosis, John Michael Koehler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, 101 Treasures of the Cranbrook Art Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI, Instructions, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, The Fourth Sex, Stazione Leopolda, Florence, Italy, Liquid Sky, FRAC, Dijon, France, Vrai que Nature, CAPC, Bordeaux, France, The Americans: New Art, Barbican Center, London, Greater New York, PS1, Long Island City, NY, The Greenhouse Effect, Serpentine Gallery, London, Holding Court, Entwistle, London, In the Public Realm and Beyond the Monument, both organized by the Public Art Fund, NY, Pop Surrealism, the Aldrich Museum, CT, Spatiotemporal-Works from the Collection 1988-1998, Magazin 3 Stockholm Konsthale, Sweden, Pollution, Claudia Gian Ferrari Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy, To Be Real, Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, CA, as well as several solo exhibitions internationally. Matelli is represented in New York by Leo Koenig Gallery.