Mattia Barbieri

Brescia, 1985. Based in Milano and New York

Executed with notable technical ability and rich in diverse elements, the paintings of Mattia Barbieri evoke a space in which all activity occurs on a single plane. Disparate and heterogeneous elements are arranged within it, often without apparent hierarchy. The works’ composition, robust and at times brilliant, gathers sediments of our collective consciousness, of art history and of popular culture, reintegrating them into new guises. Pictorial elements, whether drawn from tradition or belonging to the furthest frontier of visual neologisms, are used as the verbal units of the artist’s grammatical code, which he uses to interact linguistically with painting itself; so doing, all is deconstructed, restructured and reinterpreted.
The paintings’ surfaces are sometimes enlivened by marks and incisions, while a vanishingly thin line separates pictorial form from that of sculpture, which the artist often employs as an alternate mode of expression. Barbieri marshals his works into distinct cycles and series according to common technical innovations and iconographic forms, recognising the potential of painting practice as a multifaceted prism to be rotated, observed and translated.
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 participated in the Moscow Biennial at the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art; in 2012 he won the Museum of Lissone’s First Prize in Painting; during Expo Milano 2015, he collaborated with the collective Progetto Città Ideale; in 2017 and 2019 he held solo shows at Pablo’s Birthday in New York. He was one of the winners of the 2020 Nocivelli Prize, and of the Icona Prize at ArtVerona in 2022.
He has participated in notable international awards, residencies and curatorial projects. He teaches painting at the Aldo Galli Academy of Fine Arts in Como.