Lot 181: MATTHEW MONAHAN

Sweet Grunt

165 x 100 x 110 cm. (64 7/8 x 39 3/8 x 43 1/4 in.)

mixed media

2005

London, Saatchi Gallery, The Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, 27 May-16 October 2011 London, Royal Academy of Arts, USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi Gallery, 6 October- 4 November 2006 Berlin, Berlin Biennial, Matthew Monahan, 2006 St Petersburg, At the State Hermitage Museum, USA Today: At the State Hermitage Museum, 24 October 2007- 13 January 2008

exh. cat., The Shape of Things to Come, Saatchi Gallery, published by the Saatchi Gallery in 2011, p. 69 exh. cat., Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, Saatchi Gallery, published in 2009 by Jonathan Cape, pp. 414-415 exh. cat., USA Today: New American Art from the Saatchi Gallery, published by the Royal Academy of Arts in association with the Saatchi Gallery 2006, pp. 284 exh. cat., USA Today: At the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, published by the State Hermitage/ Royal Academy of Arts in 2006, p. 112

Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2005

A Green Man is a pagan symbol found throughout European, Asian, and Arabic cultures, thought to denote ‘nature’, or the ‘cycle oflife’. Matthew Monahan’s Sweet Grunt reinvents this character as a malevolent golem: decrepit and inane, he towers in zombie-like stance over an assemblage of classical construction. Cut through with Perspex boxes, atop drawing atop plinth, Monahan’s nymph becomes an unlikely design element: colour coordinated, and efficiently incorporated into the whole. Material substance is subverted in this alternate history: stone transforms as wobbly paper surface, and ancient legend is constructed of malleable wax. Monahan’s work points towards an unsettling sense of cultural disorientation, where independent references coalesce in awkward harmony.