Mantua, Italy 1976, lives and works in Venice Co-founder of Spazio Punch,Venice, Italy. Artistic Director from 2011 to 2015 www.spaziopunch.com Contributor of Yellow artists run space www.yellowyellow.org Contributor of Atrii_Sezione Piani www.atrii.it
DESPITE THE THOUGHT
Fabrics, printed fabrics, plastic, sewing thread, straps, buckles, zip. Various sizes About one hundred sewing machines occupy part of the large shed. They are topped with pipes, metal structures, suspended springs, and silver-plated tubes. Flat-irons are interspersed among the machines and garment relays, while paper patterns hang alongside the clothes. There is a rhythmic chaos, a deconstructed lightness. “Despite the Thought” was born during an Artists in Residence experience at Materia, hosted within a company that produces high-quality clothing and generously provided me with materials and space to work. The series of canvases and sculptures emerged from a simple desire to embrace the lightness and freedom suggested by the space. It is an instinctive body of work: thought remains suspended, while action takes over—faster, unhesitating, and unburdened by excessive questioning. “Despite the Thought” continues a series of fabric-based works I began in 2019. The decision to work with fabric, alongside paper collages, was both natural and necessary. This approach expanded the scale of the works and deepened their relationship with the surrounding space.
ALL FROM TWO
All From Two is a collaboration between Paul Burn (New York, 1978) and Lucia Veronesi (Mantova, Italia, 1976) began in 2019. Their process is intuitive and is based on conversations and negotiations of divergent aesthetic positions. The resulting forms are carefully considered hybrids that are birthed from these subconscious and playful improvisations.
MATTIA BERTOLO
The artist was born in Vicenza, Italy, in 1992, and currently lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 2017.
For this project, Lucia Veronesi and Paul Burn, working as the group ALL FROM TWO, were investigating the nature of generosity and philanthropy. They developed a series of signs based on simple hand gestures that imply various economic transactions. Using the fabrics from the factory, the colourful works are reminiscent of great modernist paintings and political banners. The resulting artworks, part of “The One Percent For Art” project, are intended to be traded at the rate of 1% of the buyer’s net worth. This non-intrusive donation is designed to finance an artistic praxis that serves as a dignified model of economics unbound by capitalist dictates. Mattia Bertolo has transformed his studio into a survivalist camp. He is developing a cross-disciplinary design motif that pays homage to vernacular architecture and major modernist movements. His cross-disciplinary practice explores our rapidly changing reality and our modes of survival.
Giuseppe Fontana was born in Salemi in 1995. He graduated in Painting from the Academies of Fine Arts in Florence and Venice. He lives and works in Berlin, where he continues his artistic research exploring the connections between the working-class world and painting.
Giuseppe Fontana (Salemi, 1995), during his recent four-month stay in Materia’s workshop, embraced the invitation posed by the project by creating 90 works on paper. These were arranged on glass shelves and clothing racks already present inside Confezioni Grazia, establishing a dialogue between modular elements and transparencies that unfolds not only on a visual and chromatic level but also, consciously, on a material one. Drawing inspiration from the company’s entire production process and considering the various steps required to create a garment, Fontana focused particularly on the cutting phase. This phase, according to the artist, can be compared to the “heterotopias” theorized by French philosopher Michel Foucault, as it represents a heterogeneous and transitional space that transcends the everyday places we inhabit and thus aspires to become a space of connection. Specifically, for Materia, Fontana referenced a Foucauldian passage where life is compared to a checkered, cut-up, and varied space, with bright and dark areas, unevenness, steps, depressions, and protrusions (1966). The exhibition of the works was further enriched by a buffet specially designed to aesthetically connect with the exhibition. It was prepared by a worker from Confezioni Grazia, Angelisa Berta, who actively participated in the exhibition’s conceptualization process.