Skip to content
Ann McCoy: "Justin Matherly: Compost"

"Justin Matherly has positioned two monumental busts of the divine physician Asklepios on either side of the gallery entrance: Eat yourself fitter (2020) and Eat yourself fitter (2019). Six cast modified gypsum statues of Telesphoros, the dwarf-like nocturnal companion of Asklepios, may be found in the corners of each room: T1-T6 (2020). This is no superficial quotation of mythology; we immediately sense the artist is working from a place of psychological and philosophical inquiry. The degree of dimensionality found in this work is impressive. That Matherly should give Asklepios such prominence in the middle of a pandemic is cause for reflection on the deepest origins of Greek medicine and the role of the god in the modern world..."