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Quite a few artists develop on their have at a time when the classical concepts of possession and authorship are invested by the logic of profile, anonymity and group. From this consciously uncomfortable placement, just one can specific oneself freely, vulgarly.
Ladri di piastrelle
In the installation and functionality get the job done Nunca fui turista em Lisboa! Giuseppe De Mattia translates the illegal trade in azulejos, glazed ceramics of Arab origin that adorn the walls of many Iberian towns, composing figurative, summary and geometric motifs into a gallery room. Azulejos intruders secretly take away the tiles to market them to visitors as souvenirs, building a black industry that supports complete families by exfoliating their metropolitan areas. Similarly, the 300 tiles set up on the walls of OPR Gallery are destined to be taken out and then obtained independently by the exhibition audience for the modest price of a memento. The De Mattia’s tiles are a distinct interpretation of the most common sq. form. All with each other they make up a ornamental floral pattern. But taken a person by a single they expose the stylisation of a male member. The parallelism in between black market and gallery reveals how the artist showcases the mechanisms of artwork to refer to broader financial and social narratives such as the authentic estate speculation that plagues some destinations and the position of individuality in the administration of common goods. The wrong testimony of a thief of azulejos, which Giuseppe De Mattia offers in audio type, is in actuality centred on the self-legitimisation of the delinquent who, like any superior artist, finds within just himself the explanations for his steps. At the stop of the operations, it is as a result important not to be fooled by the enthusiasm of the exchanges. Take a superior glance at what stays in every single person’s fingers.
Ingegno di Mola
This is not the to start with time that De Mattia has used methods and gadgets standard of street investing, also producing irony out of the artist’s need to have to market in purchase to make a residing. In Ingenuity and Independence (That’s It, MAMbo, Bologna, 2018) he collects 7 performances concentrated on clandestine exchanges. In Esposizione di frutta e verdura (Materia, Rome, 2019. Curated by Vasco Forconi) he transforms the exhibition space into a store by using a substantial show for serious and fake fruits and greens. Ingegno di Mola collection is also together these lines, which reworks the illegal apply, widespread in the South, of location up a chair in the vicinity of the front door with examples of products and solutions for sale in the non-public home. For the black and white silver salts photographic collection, Giuseppe De Mattia shoots on location, portraying serious chairs/displays from the village of Noha, in Salento. A backdrop sketched with a white cloth, on the other hand, pretends a studio copy, abstracting the item from the city cloth and supplying the illustration an idealised worth. In the sculpture, on the other hand, the artists substitutes the Salento chair for one particular created adhering to the recommendations dictated in the 1970s by the designer Enzo Mari, who observed in self-style an escape route from the logic of capitalism. On this historicised chair, even so, food items has grow to be pretend and the treasured yellow gold, oil, is mediated by a black and white photograph.
Piccola storia ignobile che gli tocca raccontare
De Mattia takes advantage of historical and conventional languages and products in an unexpected way. In the formality of the vintage, he drops the tale of negligible or marginal episodes, circumventing the narrative area of highest techniques to denounce underhand economies and moralities of a diverse variety. A list of values and behaviour, generally sweetened by the inventive narrative of the present, needs criticism and focus. Gimmicks, thievery, petty malfeasance, deceit and subterfuge describe historical connivances concerning guy, impression and landscape. The representation of art as a metaphorical, social and anthropological item is the benefit around which the whole Giuseppe De Mattia universe finds its raison d’être. The terracotta whistling mask Testa di Gianni, Fischia! tells of the time when De Mattia paid his artist close friend Gianni D’Urso to whistle on command and files the acceptance. The do the job evokes the Apulian tradition of translating costume scenes and authentic people into a terracotta whistle. The audio that goes through Gianni’s head makes the memory at any time existing and suitable. The full exhibition merges into a single genre scene, from Bari to Lisbon, traversed by a breath of vitality that phone calls the viewers to take part in the feast (or slaughter) of the worldimage. Mustard all’ancienne “Those who have not recognised the Ancien régime can by no means know what the sweetness of everyday living was”. PrinceDuke Talleyrand, one of the finest exponents of political chameleonism, consequently fed the reactionary cravings of the French, manipulating the earlier in the form of a memorable missing paradise. Like the mighty Talleyrand, De Mattia features an image of the artist self that is suitable for all seasons. On the just one hand, he is able of pandering to the retro-refined preferences of the cultured (a dollar blackens the pupils at the clap of the income sign-up). On the other it is nimble in transferring, candidly, in the inadequate undergrowths of the independent scenes. To be an artist, one particular may well say, just one must be ready to invent at minimum a single (of artists). And to provide it to the stage. Giuseppe De Mattia is an exquisite, anti-magic and tragicomically real looking a person. A guy who, with the purchase and system of an archivist of folklore, builds symbolic credibility in buy to expose its falsehood, sowing question on the genuine beliefs of white hetero cisgender Westerners and finding their fear of using it or, even worse, of not remaining ready to place it on.
Gabriele Tosi
at OPR gallery, Milan
right up until November 15, 2022
