Cose Naturali / Natural Things

Milano, 20/09 – 23/12, 2012

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.

Matteo Fato was born in Pescara, Italy, in 1979, where he currently lives and works. Most recently, he completed the residency at the Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art with an exhibition curated by Daniele Capra Vidéos_Dessins. In 2011 he took part to the 54th Biennale di Venezia in the Accademia pavillion and the Treviglio Awards.
Main solo exhibitions: (2012) Impersonale, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Strasbourg, France; Cose Naturali, Jerome Zodo Contemporary, Milan, Italy; (2011) Matteo Fato (osservando la parola), curated by 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, Rome/Pescara. 

He recently took part to the following group exhibitions: Ishmael “one is a painter,” curated by Alberto Zanchetta, Museum of Contemporary Art, Liss, Italy, (2012) Premio Francesco Fabbri, edited by Charles Hall, Villa Brandolini, Pieve di Soligo (Treviso), Italy, (2012) Fender Rewind, curated by Luca Beatrice, International Museum, Library of Music Bologna, Italy; (2012) Minima Marginalia, curated by Alberto Zanchetta, Dolomiti Contemporanee – Ex Fabbrica Visibilia, Taibon, Italy; (2012) Fuori Uso in Opera, curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, cantiere Caldora “Opera” Pescara, Italy; (2011) Difetto come indizio del desiderio, curated by Andrea Bruciati, NEON>CAMPOBASE, Bologna, Italy; CECI N’EST PAS DU CINEMA! curated by Marcella Beccaria, Castello di Rivoli, Museo del Cinema, Torino; (2010) Libri d’Artista dalla collezione Consolandi 1919-2009, curated by Angela Vettese and Giorgio Maffei, Palazzo Reale, Italy. 

In 2008 he was invited in residence at the Fondazione Spinola Banna with Adrian Paci as a Visiting Professor. In 2010 he was selected by the Dena Foundation as Italian artist in residence at Art Omi, New York. From 2009 to 2012 he taught techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, Italy.