program

from 25 May to 20 July 2013

mattia barbieri

domestic paintings

opening saturday // 25th of May 6.30 pm

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Trieste Contemporanea is proud to present Domestic Paintings, an exhibition project which will be in collaboration with Fedrico Luger and Studio Tommaseo of Trieste.  It is a co-production which will exhibit a number of works by the emerging young artist from Brescia Mattia Barbieri that are part of the same series which he has worked on this past year. The exhibition will open in Trieste at the Studio Tommaseo on May 25 (after the first part just ended in Milan) and will be open to the public until July 20. The project introduces on the occasion of the exhibition one of the small Trieste Contemporanea monographs about Mattia Barbieri's work, with a critical essay by Nicola Cecchelli.

The work of Barbieri is, above all, a profound comment on the painting technique itself – paint on paint – as the artist explains.
Through the years, Barbieri has constituted a personal archive of images collected in five volumes, from which he extracts what is necessary for the creation of a new painting.  These subjects come from the classical iconography of painting, like, for example, Saint Jerome in his Study, as well as from newspapers and magazines – that is, from contemporary traces of mass culture.  The artist works by superimposing the chosen images in different layers of paint which are then worn down with a sander in an energetic and semi-destructive manner which makes only part of the final work usable.
In the composition, two or more depictions co-habit, paintings within a painting, which recall (in a deceiving manner) the idea of a collage—almost evoking the principle of trompe-l’oeil, where everything, including the “photographs” and “adhesive tapes” which seem to glue them to the bottom, is Painting. 
At the same time, the sculpture-objects in exhibit act as “painting instruments” for the artist and act as catalysts of ideas and intuitions which come alive inside the painting. 

Mattia Barbieri was born in Brescia in 1985.  He lives and works in Milan where, in 2010, he received his degree in Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.  His first solo exhibition was in 2006 at the Federico Luger Gallery in Milan.  The same year, he had an exhibition at the Galleria 42 Contemporaneo of Modena where, soon after, he reappeared with two more artistic projects.  His collective exhibitions include Drawings, organized by Jimi Bingsley at Pablo’s Birthday of New York, and the participation, in 2010, in the Second Biennial of Moscow for Young Art at the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center.  In December 2012, he won the Lissone Award.  He collaborates with the art magazine E il topo.

Studio Tommaseo, via del Monte 2/1
mon / sat   17 / 20  free entrance


read the catalogue