PORTRAITS OF HISTORY
Solo exhibition of SABINO MATTA

3-18 June 2022
IRPINO MUSEUM
MONUMENTAL COMPLEX BORBONI PRISON
AVELLINO

From Tuesday to Saturday
h. 9-13 16-19
Free admission

On Friday 3 June at 5 pm, Sabino Matta, a painter and sculptor from Irpinia, inaugurates his first personal exhibition entitled “Portraits of history”, in the exhibition halls of the Irpino Museum, in the splendid setting of the Monumental Complex of the Bourbon Prison of Avellino.
The project includes a first stop in the city of Irpinia and then moving to other national locations and museums to promote a reflection on art and the perception of modern history.
“I created this project to give prestige to the great masters of literature, cinema, fashion, music politics and art, from whom I learned lessons. I chose the portrait because it represents for me the maximum pictorial expression that an artist can achieve, trying to capture the soul through the characteristic facial expressions of the characters “, said Matta.
Thus, over fifty portraits of famous people who have played a decisive role in contemporary society come to life, re-emerging from the “Memory Archive”, and with them a recent past re-emerges that cannot fall into oblivion because it is a constituent part of our future. The icons of the twentieth century become, in fact, for Sabino Matta a snapshot of the cultural journey of the contemporary world, a way not to get lost and not to lose track of time. By fixing the images of our present on canvas and paper, he tries to evoke their history and memory through an apparently simple language, which hides a cultural and sentimental stratigraphy hidden between veils of colors and mixed ink techniques.
Color is the real protagonist of Matta’s graphic project. The pigments applied in large fields, the play of light and dark, the alternation of solids and voids, lead us to reflect on its complex application which, at the same time, conceals and unveils the image. The operating method used by Matta reveals not only a great technical ability but also an analytical critical process that pushes the artist to construct his characteristic pictorial text. The clear and recognizable portraits thus show themselves to the viewer as times and places of memory, past and present emotions, in an eternal memory that is also a sense of belonging to a society and a nation.

The event, “Portraits of history”, born with the moral patronage of the Campania Region, the Province of Avellino and the Municipality of Serino is free and, for the occasion, guided tours have been organized for students, aimed at promoting “art and knowledge “.

Biography

Sabino Matta (Avellino, May 23, 1978) lives in Serino, the birthplace of the famous artists Francesco Solimena and Simon Rodia, approaches art since he was a child and, visiting exhibitions and museums, comes into contact with Italian and European works from the Renaissance nowadays, being particularly struck by the highly realistic and expressive figurative images. He attended the P.A. De Luca (now artistic high school) and, with professors Giovanni Spiniello, Giovanni Di Nenna and Antonio Ambrosone, receives the first artistic rudiments that will prompt him to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and to follow courses for two years. Here he has the opportunity to deepen his relationship with drawing and color and to experiment with an autonomous language, in which the central element of his study and his interests will converge towards the human figure. The investigation, in this regard, will prompt him to create the first works that appear to be openly inspired by Cubism, where images re-emerge from the undoing of the top, created through geometric cuts of color, as evoked icons. Through this figurative language, local anthropological traditions are also investigated, in a close dialogue between the center and the periphery, where color manages to convey the joy and cheerfulness of the Irpinia “masquerades”, of the carnival tradition. The observation from life will be determined for the subsequent reflections on nature and historical villages and, drawing inspiration from his Serinese territory of origin, Matta will create landscapes (real and fantastic) and still lifes, which will recur in all phases of his research. pictorial, also marking the transformation and maturity of the stylistic language.
The oscillation between realistic resistances and fantastic dimensions also determines an investigation into the artistic movements of the history of art, from the Historical Avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to conceptual art, from which Matta draws inspiration to forge and enrich his personal language, rich in experimentalisms and contaminations that make his work original and recognizable. In the works of 2006 the influences of metaphysical painting are clear, in which the description of an apparent reality communicates a sense of mystery, describing a parallel reality in which fluctuating mixes of lights and colors, recalling a dance of sounds and suggestions, typical of geometric abstractionism.
The fantastic digressions are reduced in the observation of the society of images, in which everyone is overwhelmed by continuous visual stimuli. Matta carefully reflects on the perception of modern history and his analytical path, through the history of art, finds new analogies with the recent past, so the artist makes the rudiments of Pop art the right tools to describe the very solicitous consumer society. who writes and rewrites history by repeatedly forgetting herself. The icons of the twentieth century become, in fact, for Sabino Matta a snapshot of the cultural journey of the contemporary world, a way not to get lost and not to lose track of time. By fixing the images of our present on canvas and paper, he tries to evoke their history and memory through an apparently simple language that hides an intellectual stratigraphy hidden between veils of colors and mixed ink techniques.
Thus the illustrious personalities who have played a decisive role in contemporary society come to life by resurfacing from the “Archive of memory”, and here appear Jazz icons, movie stars, athletes, musicians and portraits of great artists that evoke a recent past that cannot fall into oblivion because it is a constituent part of our future. Although color plays a fundamental role in his artistic research, Matta reserves a precise graphic project for some reflections, which unveils and reveals the image, through mixed techniques, pigments spread in large fields, light-dark, full and empty. This operating method reveals not only a great technical ability but also and above all, a critical process that moves the artist to the construction of his characteristic pictorial text. The clear and recognizable portraits show themselves to the viewer as times and places of memory, past and present emotions, in an eternal memory that is also a sense of belonging to a society and a nation. He has participated in numerous exhibitions and impromptu painting and has held the role of Councilor for culture at the Municipality of Serino (5 years), proposing didactic and laboratory activities to bring elementary and middle school students closer to art and beauty, aiming mainly at the knowledge of the artistic expressions of the Irpinia area.

For information
info@museoirpino.it
0825 790733 – 790734