I IS AN OTHER
Mark Gualtieri and Matt O’Neill
Lane Meyer Projects is pleased to present I is an other, a two-person exhibition featuring artwork by Mark Gualtieri and Matt O’Neill
March 3, 2023 - April 9, 2023
Closing Reception: Friday, April 7, 2023, 8pm - Late
For Immediate Release:
Lane Meyer Projects is pleased to present I is an other, a two person exhibition by Pittsburgh-based artist Mark Gualtieri and Denver-based artist Matt O’Neill. Gualtieri and O’Neill’s artworks differ in aesthetic and approach, which allows the viewer to create their own connections, and focus on the materiality of art. I is an other, quoted from the poet Arthur Rimbaud, encompasses this experience in a short phrase - confirming our different and singular approach to looking at artwork.
Gualtieri’s current body of work is centered around landscape and portraiture. Gualtieri is deeply involved in his environment and the people who inhabit it. He finds daily inspiration in his relationships to both ideas of people and place. The unexpected is what interests him. We live in a super fast technological world. Gualtieri is slowing down his work by painting portraits and landscapes. The unexpected pops up through a sustained observance of the subject. “You can’t just write this stuff. My friend and I saw unicorn heads at a novelty store and he bought one and put it on. It blew my mind to see him wearing it. People never cease to amaze me. They do wild and beautiful things all the time. It drives me out of my mind to try and capture all of it” - Mark Gualtieri
“Over the last few decades, Denver-based artist, Matt O’Neill, has forged his own meandering path through the artwork in Colorado. He’s mostly done it with his idiosyncratic paintings, but he’s also responsible for a large body of works on paper. Within his oeuvre, O’Neill has covered a lot of stylistic and conceptual ground, most of it anchored in some way to his highly personalized dialectic that sets high-brow art aspirations against the low-brow mature of reality.” - Michael Paglia
“Using a little imagination, painting can be like a portal…like Scorsese says about the movies…a dream state,” says O’Neill, “I love how painting doesn’t need to announce itself as high art. It doesn’t need to be in a space where people come to see culture. It doesn’t need electricity. If a bus rolls by, it doesn’t goof up the experience…it’s where you find it. It’s not necessarily only for the privileged since sometimes really cool paintings are made in the trailers while lousy ones might be done in salons.” - O’Neill quote from excerpt from Michael Paglia write up.
About the artists
Mark Gualtieri (b. 1972, Pittsburgh, PA), attended Colorado Institute of Art (1995) and Shippensburg University Graduate (1999). Mark is represented by Mendelson Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA. Mark is also based in Pittsburgh and Greensburg, PA. "I'm a painter living in the city of Pittsburgh. I have been painting for over twenty years. My work is abstract, but can be linked to objects in everyday life. Everything from appliances to bathroom products are loosely served in these works. Thoughts, dreams and emotions are also represented here." - Mark, quoted on Mendelson Gallery’s website
Matt O’Neill is an artist living and working in Denver, CO. O’Neill is the recipient of a National Endowment For The Arts Visual Fellowship Grant and his work is found in the permanent collection of The Denver Art Museum, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center and the Kirkland Museum in Denver, CO.
All photos taken by Erynn McConnell
