Matteo Fato

Cose Naturali | Natural Things, September 20 - December 23, 2012

Comunicato Stampa

Press Release

The Jerome Zodo Contemporary Gallery is proud to present Cose Naturali, the first personal Milanese Exhibition of artist Matteo Fato (1979, Pescara). The Exhibition opens Thursday 20th September 2012, at 18.00, in the Gallery in Via Lambro 7, Milan. The Exhibition project Cose Naturali was born from the desire to revisit the idea of ‘Still Life’ in a contemporary key, starting from the definition by Giorgio Vasari in his most famous treatise Le vite de' più eccellenti architetti, pittori et scultori italiani da Cimabue, insino a' tempi nostri (1550) (Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects) in which he identified the genre as the aspect of ‘Natural Things’. The project considers the search of the pictorial object as a representation, comparing the image to an object and the object to an image. According to Fato, the representative space rises to ‘thing’ independently of the expressive language adopted (paint, design, incision, sculpture, or audiovisual). The basic element is a nearly metaphysical reflection on painting, which the artist conceives as an ontological manifestation of reality. The search for an expressive tension, though instable, between word and image has always been a reason for research and interest for the artist, who does not conceive of the methodological category of separation, which he believes clouds any possibility of understanding things. Fato wants the opposite, and on this specific occasion, aims to open up with a deep breath to the understanding of reality through things and through unity of the various media. In Cose Naturali Matteo Fato presents a body of work created especially that travels from painting to the object of reference tout court, to resolve the entire Exhibition in an articulate installation axis, where an important return of the artist should be pointed out which is in his use of oil on canvas. The Exhibition is thus presented as a mise en scène to other times, like a small Renaissance study transported to the margins of a liquid society, in which the absolute protagonist is rightly painting, understood as the conceptual object that physically occupies a space. (Andrea Bruciati) Matteo Fato was born in Pescara, Italy, in 1979. He lives and works in the city of his birth and in Paris where he recently completed his residency at the Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art at the Centre International des Recollets, with the Exhibition entitled Vidéos_Dessins, curator Daniele Capra. In 2011, he received various forms of recognition including a participation at the 54° Biennale di Venezia in the Padiglione Accademie. Among his most important personal exhibitions are: (2011) Matteo Fato (osservando la parola), curator Umberto Palestini, Casa natale di Raffaello/Bottega Giovanni Santi, Urbino, Italy; (2010) Il senso dell’ordine, AB23, Vicenza, Italy; (2009) [!m’a:t?t”e(o)f;a.t,o‽], Galleria Cesare Manzo, Roma/Pescara, Italy. He recently took part in the following collective exhibitions: (2012) Fuori Uso in Opera, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, yard Caldora 'Opera' Pescara, Italy; (2011) Difetto come indizio del desiderio, curator Andrea Bruciati, NEON>CAMPOBASE, Bologna, Italy; CECI N'EST PAS DU CINEMA!, curated by Marcella Beccaria, Castello di Rivoli, Museo del Cinema, Turin, Italy; (2010) Libri d’Artista dalla collezione Consolandi 1919-2009, curators Angela Vettese and Giorgio Maffei, Palazzo Reale, Italy. In 2008 as a Visiting Professor, he took part with Adrian Paci in a Workshop held at the Fondazione Spinola Banna, Turin, Italy. In 2010 he was selected by the Dena Foundation as Italian artist in residence at Art Omi, New York. Since 2009 has been teaching Printmaking at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Urbino, Italy.