The works of Matteo Pizzolante originate from the unusual combination of elements that, once assembled, create conflicting perceptions and feelings. His aesthetic research focuses on the temporality of the creative process and on the relationship the work establishes with the surroundings. With works ranging from sculptures to cyanotypes, the artist wants to create a sort of “story of relationships”, generating a narrative.
In Pizzolante’s works, time and context are the protagonists together with the materials, and the importance of these elements is clearly visible in the works created with cyanotype. This photographic technique requires a long execution process, consisting of the production of a negative (obtained by Pizzolante with digital tools or 3D modelling), which is subsequently developed on the support through exposure to sunlight. A double temporality emerges from this creative procedure: one is the slow and dilated process of the executive stage that characterises the sculptural production, whereas the other is a different, quicker temporality that places the observer in front of a confused vision of overlapped images. This is a metaphor for what happens in our memory when we are unable to clearly remember the huge amount of images that we see every day. By using this technique and by drawing inspiration from places related to his life and from the faces of loved ones, Pizzolanti wants to highlight memory as a vision of the past, not nostalgically but as a way to shape and understand the present. According to the artist, the surface of the works becomes a sort of “skin” whereupon he acts and leaves his trace, which is visible in the cyanotypes with the overlapping of personal images. As for the sculptures, this effect is achieved with the use of different materials that are seemingly independent, but that create new and conflicting relationships when they come into contact with each other and with the action of the artist, leaving a mark of his passage.
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Matteo Pizzolante (Tricase, Lecce, 1989) graduated in building engineering in 2012, and later enrolled in a two-year course in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera under the guidance of Vittorio Corsini. He finished his studies in Germany at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden with Wilhelm Mundt and Carsten Nicolai. He has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in Italy, and is the winner of the JaguArt project promoted by Artissima and Jaguar.
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