Matteo Fato. Immagine è somiglianza (come il ritratto sia parte della pittura)

Curated by Simone Ciglia. Opening: 20/09 7-9pm Roma | 21/09 11am-2pm Pereto


Matteo Fato, (Pescara 1979) is the artist who will inaugurate Monitor's 2019/2020 exhibition season, which will debut with a news: the opening of a gallery space in the small village of Pereto, located in Abruzzo, about an hour from Rome.

The decision to open a space outside the big city stems from the need to offer a completely different experience from the today’s way of approaching art: taking one's time for the correct vision of an exhibition, rediscovering the pleasure of conversing with the gallery owner and the artists on a project and on the ispiration of a work, nurturing the growth of a relationship based on a common taste and mutual knowledge.

Pereto’s venue does not aim to be a crowded place.

It is rather conceived as a private, almost secret space, which opens its doors to the curious and interested visitor, who keen on rediscovering the taste of travel, cultur and encounter, immersing himself in an intact landscape, among secular walls that keep an idea of ​​beauty.

 

The two exhibitions will be assigned to the painter Matteo Fato’s ouvre. One show will open on September 20th in the Rome gallery, the other one will open the following day (September 21st ) in Palazzo Maccafani’s space in Pereto.

Both exhibitions will deal with the themes closest to Fato's painting, with a particular attention to the portrait, which has always took multiple and multifaceted connotations in his research, and that - in this specific occasion - is proposed as the natural evolution of a discourse on the same subject, started from the artist about seven years ago.

In 2012 the artist undertakes a work on portraits of historical persons, investigating the figures of those who have always exercised a great fascination on his path. In 2019 Matteo Fato decides to choose people from his own time as protagonists of his portraits, thus returning his work to the 'traditional' approach in the practice of the genre. This choice marks a clear and precise passage, connoting the series of his portraits dedicated to historical figures as propaedeutics to the ‘live portrait’, considered by the artist as ‘a metaphor of the landscape’, or expression of contemporary space and current time.

The portrayed subjects are people who make a dialogue and that are in relation to both, personal and professional sphere of the artist, and who consequently contribute to compose a new narrative line of his pictorial language, as well as to redefine the level of the the image’s value and of the role of current contemporary art scene’s protagonists.

Pereto site will also be interested in installative and site-specific dimensions of Fato’s work. In addition to the unreleased portraits, will be also exhibited previous works that can be considered as fundamental for the painter’s artistic’s journey.