Chicago, United States, 1971.

In 1991 he studied in the Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art-Independent Study in New York. In 1993 he continued his education at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in Wisconsin. In 1995, he studied at the Cranbrook Art Academy in Michigan.

In 1998 he received a scholarship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and worked for Jeff Koons for several years.

He combines very different materials such as metal, glass, porcelain, marble, silicone, paper, animal fur, etc. in daily objects. His work is artisanal, with great effort, and once the pieces are moulded he colours them with an airbrush.

With a hyper-realist language, he portrays the most concerning aspects of man and society. Using metaphors for our own discomfort and our fight for survival, Matelli's sculptures parody interior situations of desolation, panic, ambivalence and desperation. He represents characters and things that are just about surviving, things that are almost dead, desperately lost or, in some way, totally undesirable.

In the words of the artist himself: "Self-realisation is the current societal dilemma, actually it always has been; we've just been distracted. With our current state of relative stability, we find ourselves without external distractions. Many of us are starting to look inward, and we are coming up empty. I make work that speaks of the need and the frustration of trying to locate oneself within an already set world. My work frequently depicts things finding wayward means of survival. This is the most authentic way that I know of showing the current psychological status of myself, my friends and acquaintances, the people I make work about and the people that I make work for."

He has worked in over 200 national and international exhibitions, both individual and collective.

His work can be found in: ARoS Aarhus, Denmark; Kunstmuseum, Bergen Art Museum, Norway; Cranbrook Art Museum, Michigan, United States; the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal, Canada; Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Mudam, Luxembourg; National Center for Contemporary Arts Moscow, Russia, etc.

Lives and works in New York.