Mattia Barbieri
“Mattia Barbieri (Brescia, 1985), on the other hand, creates paintings in which the formal and pictorial aspect regains centrality. The painting is built by the painter following a very complex and rich process. The surface becomes the battlefield in which graphic signs, engravings, figures and material details interact on a par with the actual pictorial composition. The visionary and almost alien subjects, although functional to enhancing the pictorial nature of the painting, do not play a secondary role: they are a recurring element through which the plastic elements of his painting are declined.”
With strong technical ability, illusionistic effects and a wealth of elements, Mattia Barbieri’s painting reveals itself as a painting of surface, where everything takes place on a single plane, ideal and concrete, a field within which disparate and heterogeneous elements are often arranged without apparent hierarchy. The solid and at times virtuosic composition gathers sediments of the collective imagination, of art history and of popular culture, recombined in a new guise. The pictorial elements, whether they belong to tradition or to the most extreme visual neologisms, are used as words that make up a grammatical code with which the artist interacts with painting as a language, through which everything is deconstructed, restructured and reread.
A graduate of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, he has exhibited in solo and group shows in Italy and abroad since 2007. In 2010 he took part in the Moscow Biennale at the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center; in 2012 he won the First Painting Prize of the Museo di Lissone; during Expo Milano 2015 he collaborated with Progetto Città Ideale, exhibiting and curating a cycle of art events at the Sala delle Colonne of the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan; in 2017 and 2019 he held solo shows at Pablo’s Birthday in New York; in 2020 he was among the winners of the Premio Nocivelli.
After the first edition he joined the gallery’s programme and is now represented by it. In 2025 he presented a solo show in the Düsseldorf space.