Works from personal exhibitions: Fumi (Agoràrte gallery, Milan, Brera 2006) and Demon & friends (Maelstrom gallery, Milan, Brera 2010) to date.
Dazzling neon lights in strong contrast with the darkness of the night, allow Nannini to juggle with situations and atmospheres creating antithetical feelings: from calm to restless.
Paintings published in personal exhibition’s catalogues: Fumi (Agoràrte gallery, Milano, Brera 2006) and Matteo Nannini’s Works (to celebrate the first twenty years of artistical activity).
Text by Alberto Agazzani
Art Critic (1967-2015)
For Affordable Art Fair 2011
Milan
This particular exhibition occasion forces me to be more concise than usual,
but there’s no need for great hyperbole, endless quotations, or who knows what flights of fancy:
Matteo Nannini is a concrete artist.
In the best sense of the word.
This new, substantial body of work concerns nightlife and the creatures that inhabit it and contribute to
its characterization. The night, especially that of Emilia-Romagna, is sly.
…”a bit motherly, a bit slutty”… To quote Ligabue, who isn’t exactly the painter.
Matteo Nannini knows this well.
From his subjects, alternately elegant and trivial, Nannini is an author of experience.
By this I don’t mean a mere representation of the visible: Matteo carefully studies his compositions, he creates them!
Just as the masters of the past did. Starting from more or less clear images or impressions generated by his mind,
he reinvents reality by adding or removing figures, juggling lights, realigning and modifying shapes; he rages over the work
to achieve the most effective effect to express it.
Often, not satisfied with the result achieved, he finds himself reworking works long completed.
As with the previous water cycle (Overfloating), Matteo alternates solid figuration and pictorial deformation, but here it is alcohol
and who knows what other substances and instincts that undermine structures and physiognomies.
Quiet convivial scenes give way to colorful and vibrant performers of the night, until we find ourselves facing figures resting
after intercourse in unlikely locations, because: “…when the blood boils, there’s no time to check if the sheets are silk!”…
Alberto Agazzani
