“Mathew Cerletty’s End of the Line brings together a new series of meticulously rendered paintings that elevate everyday objects into quiet, uncanny icons. Through hyper-precise surfaces and bold fields of color, Cerletty isolates familiar items—envelopes, sponges, gloves, sinks—until they feel both intimate and strangely monumental. The exhibition reveals his ongoing fascination with the tension between banality and transcendence, using ordinary forms to explore questions of presence, perception, and meaning. Installed as a contemplative ensemble, the works speak to each other through shape, texture, and tone, creating a visual meditation on the objects that structure daily life.”

Exhibition Details

  • Artist: Mathew Cerletty

  • Title: End of the Line

  • Dates: November 7 – December 20, 2025

  • Opening Reception: November 7, 6–8 pm

  • Location: Karma Gallery, 22 East 2nd Street, New York, NY

  • Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–6pm

What the Show Is About

  • The exhibition features 11 new paintings made over the past year.

  • Cerletty centers common, everyday objects on his canvases — things like envelopes, towels, sponges, or gloves — and renders them with intense precision. His technique makes the objects look both hyperreal and slightly surreal: highly detailed, but isolated against flat, bold color fields.

  • He often draws from found sources — like advertisements — and refines those images through repeated sketches and studio work until they become distilled, almost “Platonic” forms.

  • Although the scenes feel clean and clinical, there’s a wry humor and conceptual depth: for example, a manila envelope in Messenger is treated almost like a sacred icon.

  • The way the works are installed allows a “conversation” between them: texture, tone, lighting, and shape play off each other to explore ideas of inwardness and outwardness.