MATTEO NASINI

MATTEO NASINI
Born in Rome 1976, lives and works in Milan and Rome.
Education
1996 - 2002 Degree in Doubble bass at “Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia”, Rome
Solo Show
“Sparkling Matter” Marsèlleria, Clima Gallery, Milan, 2016
“Resort Mirage” curated by Ilaria Gianni, Operativa, Rome, 2015
“Sleepy Night” text by Michele D’Aurizio,The Gallery Apart, Rome, 2014
Selected Group Exihibitions and Projects
2016
“Why Pattern?” curated by Barbara Nordacchione, Museo archeologico, Penne
“Anello di Cupra” curated by Marcello Smarrelli, Biblioteca Civica, Fermo
“The Hawt Show” organized by Galleria Rolando Anselmi, Colle Melone
“From The City” organized by A Plus A Gallery, Venice
“I Materiali Della Pittura” curated by Davide Sarchioni, Il Frantoio, Capalbio
“Urban Vision” curated by Davide Sarchioni, Pinacoteca, Acquapendente
“Helicotrema” curated by Blauer Haze, Centrale Fies, Dro
“Studio e Bottega” curated by Ilaria GIanni, Pastificio Cerere, Rome
“From Transhuman To South Perspectives” curated by Emmanuelle Luciani and Charlotte Cosson, Rowing, London
“Roma Arte aperta” Curated by Luca Tomio, Ex Dogana, Rome
“Mediterranean Sonata” curated by Rino Lombardi, Palazzo Costanzi, Trieste
2015
“Paesaggio Acre” Artissima, Operativa, Tourin
“TalentPrize”, Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome
“Color my life with the chaos of trouble”, curated by Giovanna Manzotti and Francesco Lecci, Clima, Milan
“Distratti dal buio” edited by Yard Press, Rome
“In che senso Italiano?(ancora!)” Bibo’s Place, Todi
“Seiemezza” curated by Benedetta Carpi De Resmini, centro Elsa Morante, Rome
“Il Museo Delle Palme” curated by LA Project Space, Botanical Garden, Palermo
“Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market in Venice” curated by Tommaso Speretta, A plus A Gallery, Venice
“Festival Internaziomale di Installazioni Luminose”, curatd by NERO, via del Trullo, Rome
“Va Nel posto Che Non So, Prendi Quello Che Non Ho”, Una Vetrina, curted by Gianni Garrera, Rome
“La Scrittura Degli Echi” curated by NERO, Maxxi, Rome
“A Bed Is A Door #4 - Le Petit Jeu” curated by Gasconade, Villa Romana, Florence
“Sound Corner” curated by Anna Cestelli Guidi, text by Valerio Mannucci, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
2014
“CODALUNGA” with Filipa Ramos, Aula Bunker, Rome
“Andiamo LA” curated by Daniela Cotimbo, L’A Project, Palermo
“The Sudden Gust” edited by NERO, text by Valerio Mannucci
“There Is No place Like Home” Via Aurelia Antica 425, Rome
“Helicotrema” curated by Blauer Haze, Fonderie Battaglia, Milan
“Trust, Vita Vel Regula” curated by Michele D’Aurizio, Fluxia, Milan
“A Bed Is A Door #3” Villa Romana, Florence
“Mess On A Mission” curated by Gasconade, Art O Rama, Marseille
“Nuove Residency” curated by Geraldine Blais Zodo, Nove, Bassano del Grappa
“L’anno Venturo Alla Città Di Cosa” curated by Michele D’Aurizio, Ansedonia
“Campus”, workshop on Cildo Meireles exhibition, Hangar Bicocca, Milan
“Art is real” curated by Silvia Litardi, Piazza Pasquino, Rome
“Iconica” curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi and Maria Alicata, Rome
“Nuova Gestione” curated by Sguardocontemporaneo, Rome
2013
“Kick Off” performance with Francesco Fonassi, Via Farini, DOCVA, Milan
“Una Vetrina”curated by Giuseppe e Gianni Garrera, Rome,
“The Volume of Air” performance with Davide Stucchi, Serra dei Giardini, Venice
“A Bed Is A Door”performance with Davide Stucchi, Villa Romana, Florence
“Helicotrema”curated by Blauer Hase, MACRO, Radio3, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
“The Ritual of the snake” curated by Gianni Politi, Pastificio Cerere, Rome
2012
“STAN” performance curated by Ilaria Gianni, MACRO, Rome
“FW2013RTW (KUDOS)”curated by Michele D’Aurizio, Federica Schiavo Gallery, Rome
“Re-generation”curated by Ilaria Gianni and Maria Alicata, MACRO, Rome
“Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun”curated by Chris Sharp, Nomas Foundation, Rome
“Cartabianca”curated by NERO, sguardo contemporaneo and Carla Subrizi, Museo di arte contemporanea
di Villa Croce, Genova
2011
“When in Rome”curated by Luca Lo Pinto and Valerio Mannucci, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles
“AmenHammerAmeno” performance by Luigi Ontani, audio project by Matteo Nasini, curated by Luca Lo
Pinto and Valerio Mannucci, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
“Multiverse Tree” installation by Carola Bonfili, audio project by Matteo Nasini, curated by Ilaria
Bonacossa,Torre Maizza
“Le cose non crescono al buio” curated by Giovanni Mayer, Road to Contemporary Art, Kaleidoscope arena, Rome
“Amarelarte” curated by Bruno Barzanti and Fabrizio Bellomo, Bari
2010
“Kippplelake” installation by Carola Bonfili, audio project by Matteo Nasini, curated by Ilaria Gianni and Costanza Paissan, MACRO, Rome
“La-Bora-Torio”curated by Rino Lombardi, Palazzo Costanzi , Trieste
2009
“Visioni Dischiuse”curated by Francesca Sassu in collaboration with di Denis Isaia, Martina Cavallarin and
Anna Maria Janin, Mandas
Kinemastik International Short Film Festival, Malta
“Risonatori Eolici”curated by Rino Lombardi, Museo della Bora, Trieste
“Only Kaputt Landshaft”non-thingthing.com, curated by Sebastian Irrang
2005-2008
Member of “Orchestra Luigi Cherubini “ directed by Riccardo Muti
Further collaborations with the following conductors Kurt Masur, Jurij Temirkanov, Rudolf Barshai,
Krisztof Penderecki, Jonathan Webb and Placido Domingo.
SPARKLING MATTER
Marselleria, Clima gallery, MIlan, 2016
Sparkling Matter is a moment of “collective sound experimentation”, the outcome of a research led by the artist at the frontier of
sound, technology and neurosciences. It aimed at acquiring and transforming into sound – via a specific software – the cerebral
waves generated during the various stages of sleep. The project takes the form of an environment for a sleep concert that took place on the 7th of April and consisted of the recording of the brain activity of a person sleeping in the gallery space. The experience
of the nocturnal concert is extended over the course of the exhibition through the elaboration of the audio material generated during
the live. The installation also includes a series of 3D printed porcelain sculptures which materialise the sound of Sparkling Matter.
Sparkling Matter, 2016
installation view at Marsèlleria
3d print porcelain, inflatable mats, quilt, speakers, EEG, software
ambiental dimension
Quilt detail
pile, wool yarn, nylon
180 x 135 cm each
TEST ROOM
in the test room, the brain activity of the sleeper monitored from an EEG, is transformed into sound in
real time using FFT-OSC conversion and audio software designed for processing the flowing data
SLEEP CONCERT
The duration fo the performance was guided by the sleeper based in the test room,
the total duration of the sleep-concert was from 11.45 pm to 6.15 am
at this link an estract of the sleep concert
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/sparkling-matter
The data from the brain activity of the R.E.M. phase, was scanning into 3d modelling
software and then printed in porcelain.
Sparkling Matter, 2016
Clima Gallery
installation view
Dream Portrait, 2016
23 x 16 x 16 cm
3d print porcelain
Dream Portrait, 2016
30 x 15 x 15 cm
3d print porcelain
Dream Portrait, 2016
31 x 15,5 x 15,5 cm
3d print porcelain
Dream Portrait, 2016
25,5 x 15,5 x 15,5cm
3d print porcelain
Dream Portrait, 2016
19 x 7,5 x 7,5 cm
3d print porcelain
Dream Portrait, 2016
24,5 x 7 x 7 cm
3d print porcelain
Text by Giovanna Manzotti
Sparkling Matter is a potentially infinite cyclic horizon, a fertile ground contaminated by sculptural objects, visual patterns and sound
data elaborated in a live flux.
Starting from studies based on the states of consciousness active during the various stages of sleep, Matteo Nasini focuses on
the possibility of transforming cerebral waves of someone sleeping into sound. The electrophysiological recording of the electroencephalogram (EEG) is able to capture the electrical activity of the brain. This process - here realised with a 16 channel Brain Computer Interface system - permits brain waves to be acquired and re-elaborated into single sound frequencies through an analogue
digital process.
What arises is a polyphonic constellation in a continuous evolution in time, which is not directly subject to verifiable parameters, like
the intensity variations of Delta, Theta and Alpha waves during the sleep cycles. The focal point of the project is to find an impulse
towards a sensitive posture in a listening sphere, a personal attitude inside the abstraction of the sound element, considered as
a physical and spatial dimension, both personal and collective. The real perception of a purely evocative form as the spectrum of
sounds audible during the two sleep concerts, will allow the listener to experiment with his own hypnagogic state, entering a transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and falling asleep, when images and thoughts tend to acquire a vague and
almost blurred nature.
What is at stake is also the analysis of the intervention of technological data in the identity of a human process, and how this is
capable of modifying its trajectory, channelling it into an hybrid stream.
Sparkling Matter thus reveals itself as elusive matter and living substance, as much as a complex and hectic object. It is a rhythmic
landscape of impulses and light trails acting on a liminal zone, ready to contract and expand; it is a soundtrack of signs striving for a
plastic form. It is a temporal folding where the mind, followed by the body, slips into a ‘region of the consciousness’. The attempt to
give it a voice and a form is a way of grasping and sharing it.
Test Room, 2016
PVC, digital print
200 x 251 cm
RESORT MIRAGE
Operativa, Rome 2015
Resort Mirage, 2015
450 x 270 x 180 cm
mixed media
Operativa, Rome
Resort Mirage, 2015
mixed media
Operativa, Rome
Resort Mirage, 2015
installation view
Operativa, Rome
Text by Ilaria Gianni
miraggio ‹miràggio›
s.m.(pl. -gi )
1 Fenomeno ottico atmosferico che si verifica, in particolari condizioni, su ampie superfici piane (distese di sabbia, strade asfaltate,
ecc.), per cui è visibile l’immagine di oggetti lontani (alberi, monti, ecc.) apparentemente riflessi in una superficie liquida posta ai
loro piedi (m. inferiore), oppure che sembrano galleggiare nel cielo (m. superiore, che si verifica soprattutto in mare); si deve alla
rifrazione dei raggi luminosi che attraversano strati di aria contigui aventi diversa temperatura e quindi differente indice di rifrazione.
2 fig. Prospettiva tanto allettante quanto ingannevole: essere attratto dal m. di facili guadagni; anche, illusione, sogno irraggiungibile, utopistico: la felicità su questa terra è solo un m.
ETIMOLOGIA Dal fr. mirage, der. di mirer ‘mirare’
DATA 1877.
L’Hotel Miraggio è a Roma, ma anche a Fregene, a Rimini e a Cortina, a Ravenna e santa Teresa di Gallura, a Milano e a Messina.
Potrei continuare in quanto ogni città d’arte, località balneare e sciistica possiede il suo “Miraggio”, senza neppure menzionare i
“Mirage” che ci sono in giro per il mondo. Non basterebbero quattro facciate fronte/retro di un poster a contenerli tutti: palazzetti
anni cinquanta, castelli kitsch, chalet raffinati, bungalow sulla spiaggia, cubi di cemento, grattacieli di vetro. Il più noto forse è a Las
Vegas, essa stessa miraggio nel deserto del Nevada, città illusione per eccellenza, costruita seguendo criteri di seduzione commerciale e d’immaginario infantile, luogo virtuale e ingannevole, immenso palcoscenico ove la finzione sembra realtà nel momento in
cui è vissuta.
Mi sono sempre domandata perché tanti alberghi abbiano adottato il nome “Miraggio”. Forse perché metaforicamente intesi come
oasi, spazi liminari temporanei che permettono, come Las Vegas, a chi li abita di evadere il quotidiano e a volte di ristorarsi. Porre
l’essere umano per un momento in uno stato di illusione, metterlo nella condizione di sognare concretamene – un ossimoro bellissimo e nella vita a volte necessario – potrebbe essere, quando autentico, inteso come un atto di generosità. Si immagina l’inesistente che si vorrebbe raggiungere, si costruiscono dei riflessi diversi da quelli solitamente percepiti. Sarà terapeutico? Ignorando
la sua base scientifica, sicuramente il miraggio è sempre stato parte fondamentale della tradizione popolare, mitologica e simbolica
della specie umana. Storie di miraggi sono rintracciabili nei secoli, causa e conseguenza di battaglie, vittorie, dispersioni e vendette. Abbagliati dalle visione sono finite le penne di poeti e artisti. L’incantesimo della Fata Morgana – il più potente dei miraggi – ha
colpito André Breton. Il suo poema Fata Morgana narra un paesaggio fantasioso su cui lo “sguardo errante” si perde, costituito da
tubi colorati, mobili colmi di sabbia posti in fondo a mare, porte senza nome, alberghi di piante verdi, caffè e zucchero. Il sole riappare solo alla fine della poesia: il poeta ritorna in superfice e recupera i sensi perduti. Ma con la Fata Morgana, miraggio e figura
fantastica dalle diverse identità – sorella di Artù nel ciclo arturiano, strega nella mitologia celtica, creatura sovrannaturale abitante
del Monte Etna – andiamo forse a toccare un’altra sfera, apparentemente vicina al miraggio eppure appartenente storicamente ed
accademicamente ad un’altra dimensione: quella della visione.
visione ‹visióne›
s.f.
.
1 Percezione degli stimoli luminosi: v. vicina, lontana, chiara, distinta, diretta, indiretta
part. Osservazione accurata fatta allo scopo di ricavare utili informazioni: ricevere un campione, un esemplare in v.; nel linguaggio
burocratico:prendere, dar v. di un atto
A proposito di spettacoli cinematografici, proiezione, presentazione al pubblico: film in prima, in seconda v., che viene presentato al
pubblico per la prima, per la seconda volta; cinema di prima v., nel quale si proiettano solo film in prima visione.
2 estens. Idea, concetto, quadro: avere una v. piuttosto limitata di un problema, della realtà.
3 Apparizione miracolosa (le v. di Giacobbe, di Ezechiele) o frutto di allucinazione mentale; com. , con tono ironico o spregiativo, a
proposito di fantasticherie o idee utopistiche (codeste sono solo v.!)
arc. Apparizione veritiera, contrapposta a sogno: disse quello che taluno veduto avea dormendo non essere stato sogno ma visione
(Boccaccio)
estens. Spettacolo di incomparabile bellezza o particolarmente impressionante: la v. indimenticabile del golfo di Napoli; una v.
raccapricciante
Opera letteraria che consiste essenzialmente nel racconto di una apparizione; nel Medioevo era un genere letterario e devozionale
molto diffuso, di ispirazione biblica, consistente in descrizioni dell’Oltretomba.
ETIMOLOGIA Dal lat. visio -onis, der. di visus, p. pass. di vidēre ‘vedere’
DATA sec. XIV.
L’atto del vedere: il più naturale esistente per chi ha la fortuna di avere una percezione ottico-visiva funzionante. Con il termine
visione si indica in fisiologia l’esperire l’ambiente circostante attraverso la vista. In ambito scientifico questa sarebbe l’unica accezione del termine; tuttavia, esso è utilizzato in tutte le culture con un significato ben diverso e più suggestivo, spesso associato al
termine allucinazione, o alterazione mentale, ossia il vedere un’immagine straordinaria che appare dinnanzi a un individuo e, per
la percezione della quale, non occorre necessariamente l’utilizzo degli organi di senso. Nella nostra società spesso questa forma
è interpretata con sospetto. Coloro che “hanno le visoni” sono persone relegate ai margini: trattate con diffidenza e timore sono
da sempre considerate creature diverse. Come per il miraggio, anche in questo caso mi chiedo se questo valore negativo renda
giustizia alla complessità del fenomeno. Il visionario per eccellenza è probabilmente la Pizia dell’oracolo di Delfi che emetteva i suoi
vaticini in uno stato di trance. La figura di veggente è rimasta nei secoli, presenza respinta e desiderata, necessaria come contraltare alla dimensione razionale in cui l’essere umano si trova costretto. Ma l’alterazione della percezione non potrebbe essere anche
sinonimo di rivelazione improvvisa, di illuminazione? E poi è necessariamente sempre associata all’organo dell’occhio? E le visioni
uditive? La sinestesia non è forse reale? In fondo i nostri sensi, pur essendo autonomi, non agiscono in maniera del tutto distaccata
gli uni dagli altri. Un visionario non è necessariamente sotto lo scacco di un’allucinazione, è colui che guarda al di là, con la capacità di immaginare e costruire: una costruzione della mente che non ha realtà oggettiva e forse proprio per questo possibilmente
sagace. Che siano indotte da sostanze allucinogene, nati come conseguenze di psicopatologie, suggestioni esterne, o semplici
desideri, le visioni sono fenomeni fisiologici e psicologici esistenti e ricercati. Sogno, fantasia, illusione, processo di pensiero alternativo, deviazione verso un modo personale e utopico di vedere il mondo. La visione andrebbe pensata più come interpretazione,
come l’atto di risalire ad un significato personale partendo da ciò che appare come segno.
SLEEPY NIGHT
The Gallery Apart, Rome 2014
Sleepy Night, 2014
installation view
The Gallery Apart, Rome
Sleepy Night, 2014
installation view
The Gallery Apart, Rome
Sleepy Night, 2014
wool, fabrics, foam rubber
110 x 300 x 180 cm
Line, 2014
wool, wood
120 x 40 cm each
Movimento #1, 2014
wool, glass, metal
70 x 60 cm
Le cose non crescono al buio, 2012
wool, fabrics, foam rubber, rope
160 x 50 cm + rope
Sleepy Night, 2014
installation view
The Gallery Apart
Feeling the way he feels
Text by Michele D’Aurizio
It is very sad to think that a work of art can be a precipitate. Nevertheless, it frequently happens that the viewer is in front of an
object that represents the outcome of a process, whether it be intellectual or physical, a gesture that is like a reflection: basically
an artifact full of that complacency for being the arrow that hit the target; and promptly a petered out object, dumb and macho.
The artist releases his work so that the viewers can lovingly admire it; and he enjoys looking at them as they chase after the
transubstantiation of the dumb and macho object in cultural portato: historically determined, fundamental so that others will
understand the existential turning point of an entire community of individuals, metaphor of absolute artistic deontology, and so
forth. In
front of the work of art, the beholder is slowly sucked into the quagmire of rhetoric; whereas, the other, the artist, puts on the
grin of winner on his face.
“I do not know what is more difficult, whether being the defeated or the winner; however I know one thing for sure, that the
human value of the defeated is superior to that of the winners’.” Italian writer Curzio Malaparte concluded one of his books, The
Skin, by declaring the shameful nature of victory. He would then strengthen his conclusion showing a Christian affection towards
the defeated: “Over the last few years, I have travelled, often, and for a long time, in the countries of the defeated and of the
winners’, yet the place where I feel better is among the defeated. This is not because I enjoy watching other people’s misery,
and humiliation, but because man becomes tolerable, acceptable, only in misery and in humiliation. The man living in fortune,
the man sitting on the throne of his pride, of his power, of his happiness, the man robed in frills and his winner’s insolence, is a
repulsive show.”
I personally imagine the work of art as the ocean liner’s hull that was sheared off by the iceberg; a prop that helps the viewer
become aware of an existence, which though not tragic, or farcical, is certainly epic. Inborn to the manipulation of the material,
as well as to the exploration of the artistic medium, or to the codification of an aesthetic language, this is how the challenge to
the formalization of a feeling would be; one that does not give birth to the reproduction of the echo of a laughter, or the freezing
of a tear; but a form comparable to the cast of the horror vacui that two bodies experience after the sexual intercourse; or an
icastic image like the ceramic tile representing a station of the Way of the Cross. It is likewise sad to think that the work of art
can be the precipitate of a feeling…. However, here it finds its compromised indexical nature: it becomes the sign of an intangible motion, the fossil of an inner experience, the shadow of a ghost.
Italian artist Matteo Nasini is perhaps a defeated. Now, a lot of people would interpret such statement literally: an emerging
artist, born in 1976, brought up and based in Italy, is neither a sturdy thoroughbred on whom traders would bet, nor the next big
thing that would fuel the yakety-yak across the art system… Nasini’s artistic production has in fact emerged in a relatively recent
past, when the artist boasted a ten years’ experience as a double bassist, a profession he abandoned to nourish sensitivities
more consistent with the field of the visual arts. A key to interpret Nasini’s pro
duction maybe lies in the fact that the artist did not study art, but music, which has always been a sincere language, never
guilty of arrogance, and which on the contrary stimulates empathy among its lovers… Such are the works by Nasini: paltry and
humble as they use poor materials and resort to old techniques; naïve not because they lack virtuosity, but because they explore forms and oneiric imageries or deliver an everyday magic; romantic like the pages of a sentimental diary – fossils of inner
experiences, created to dispel the pain or to unveil the joy.
Matteo Nasini’s research is based on two artistic media: sound and drawing. As it often happens with complex artists, who
however possess the maturity to structure their own production in order to develop it on distinct typological and thematic fronts,
sound and drawing rarely coexist in the same work, as they generate different outputs: the first brings forth musical sculptures,
sound installations and performances; whereas the second produces tapestries. On the other hand, photography plays a transversal and peripheral role, as it is cultivated daily for documentary intent, but always ready to elevate to art when a certain shot
prevails over the others because of a shift in meaning.
Sound artworks, tapestries, and photographs – in their widely varied forms - are not therefore released so that the viewers can
discover flashes of their life experiences in the artist’s own past. The audience is instead invited to employ all his rhetorical
skills; and to finally witness the surrender of any interpretative tools in front of those artworks that do not aim to be metaphors of
the most inner feelings, but to quell an attitude that those feelings contributed to express. Nasini’s artworks, for example, boast
bashfulness: the performance of a musical improvisation is left to the wind (the resonators of the series “Sculture eoliche”, 2008
– currently on view); the drawings are released only after a camouflage of their nature (tapestries such as Piango rosa, 2010,
or Le cose non crescono al buio, 2012); the performance of a solemn musical theme ventures cacophony (the Stan performance , 2012). The traditional artistic themes that recur here – decoration, landscape art, debate between high and low culture,
etc. – are like the armour that protects the frail body; to undress it requires only extreme acts such as an abuse of power or the
creation of an exclusive intimacy.
I invite the audience to feel like Matteo feels. Especially on the event that this essay introduces: the artist’s first solo show held as
part of the Ermes project in Rome (Italy). The exhibition presents a selection of art works which explore the expressive qualities of
the wool, accompanied by some photographs that suggest a semantic frame of the main works, as they are used to fade in and
fade out the presentation. There are no sounds in the space; and that field of Nasini’s production is left to the photograph of a broken aeolian resonator (Land, 2014). This is in fact an exhibition which features only images, rather palpable, rather fathomable, as
is the memory of our dreams as we awake.
The piece from which the show takes its name (Sleepy Night, 2014) is a tapestry that stands out for its strong sculptural structure.
It represents a starry sky falling down on a mountain and shrouding its shape. It is an image that seems to belong to an ancestral
fairy tale, an apocalyptic myth about the disarray of the world, and which nevertheless originates from the pure imagination of the
artist – another output generated by the need to dissipate a melancholic layer of the soul and, through an accurate, feminine and
archaic performance, to reestablish the ingredient of delicacy as a critical factor.
The objects presented in the show are delicate, fragile, weak – whose ichnographic references oscillate between art brut and protoabstract art. If, on the one hand, artworks such as Le cose non crescono al buio evoke the painters working in the style of naïve
art, other artworks such as Line (2014) evoke those avant-garde attempts to abstract the landscape into synthetic images, built by
following a spiritualist perception of nature, rather than visual parameters … Likewise, the artworks from the series “Movimento”
(2014) originate from small gestures that, far from boasting a dramatic instinctiveness, pursue the organized structure of a choreography – if we look at them from above, they appear like satellite imagery of the Earth, or fossils, again, representations for which
the distance, either spatial or temporal, provides grace to a subject that dwells in the unknown. Line and Movimento #1, #2, and #3
are poor abstractions: the materials employed are as paltry and humble as the choices that have led to their creations. Today, in
fact, only an artist who is a defeated would refuse an in-depth analysis of the painting medium in the planning of his own production… Matteo Nasini is, as such, a non-painter but an artist who, by the way he portrays the distress of his own soul, suggests an
attitude towards art nourished by a profound humanism.
Elementale, 2012
Mixed media
ambiental dimension
installation view
Re-Generation, MACRO, Rome
site-specific installation at MACRO museum in Rome.
Elementale is formed by a series of wind resonators upright one above the other to form a sort
of living module, in which it is possible to enter and be surrounded by sound.
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/elementale
Elementale, 2012
Mixed media
ambiental dimension
installation view
Re-Generation, MACRO, Rome
STAN, 2012
performance, Re-Generation, MACRO, Rome
Conceived for the anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s birthday, the performance brings together musicians and non-musicians passionate about the director. The fans form a temporary orchestra to execute, with any kind of instrument, the
introduction of Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” famously used on the soundtrack of the film 2001:
A Space Odyssey.
Piango Rosa, 2011
wool yarn, fabrics
165 x 130 cm
When in Rome, IIC, Los Angeles
Audio project for the Luigi Ontani performance, AmenHammerAmeno
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2011
The score is composed for original Balinese instruments and has a tripartite structure. The piece imagines an ideal journey
to Bali: starting from an elaboration of the tradition of European music influenced by Asian harmonies, the piece gradually
evolves into a traditional Balinese song, to then transform again, in the last part of the work, into a fusion of the first two
movements.
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/amenhammerameno
Centocordo, 2011
wood, metal, nylon
233 x 180 x 27 cm
installation view
Bari seaport
The work is inspired by the Fascist-era transformation of the Bari coastline and relates to the unfinished portion of the government’s urbanization project, which anticipated using the port as a “colonial bridge” to the Arab world. My project is based on
the idea of subverting this colonial relation, rereading it from a perspective opposed to the actual historical dynamics. The aim is to
construct an instrument of union between the different cultures by taking an element capable of physically going beyond these two
worlds – the wind – and transforming it into a universal language: sound.
The work is a sound sculpture that evokes the image of a window, at once ideal and real, facing the Mediterranean. It has a double
set of chords that are stretched between the front and back of the installation and played by the wind. The first set of chords,
facing the sea, is tuned to the sequence of the Arab scale, while the second, facing the land, is tuned according to the principles of
European harmonics.
http://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/centocordo
The Sudden Gust, 2014
Text by Valerio Mannucci
This edition, composed of a vinyl and eight large-format prints, collects part of the work that Matteo Nasini has developed over
the last four years in relation to “aeolian sound” – the sound that is produced when a system of strings, applied to a sound box, is
made to vibrate by the wind. Rather than simply documenting it, The Sudden Gust fixes the incorporeal dimension of the encounter between wind and sound in the form of an object.
Matteo Nasini often designs his aeolian interventions in vibrant spaces, where the environmental and atmospheric conditions, the
interference noise, the position of the listener, the unpredictability of the wind, and the visual and plastic qualities of the objects
themselves constitute, in their entirety, an articulated experience. With this edition, Matteo Nasini re-elaborates that same kind of
experience by means of a vinyl and a series of visual compositions.
The recordings contained in the vinyl are traces of concrete events: throughout the years, the artist has recorded his “sound
objects” in several places and in different conditions. The wind does not follow constant trends, directions or intensities; an aeolian
instrument never plays the same way twice; and the soundscapes, which consist also of background noises, change constantly.
The aeolian sound cannot be written, directed and performed by a person.
Yet this is not merely a loss of control: beyond its randomness, what is relevant in the work of Matteo Nasini is the non-human
dimension. The artist’s role tends toward an act of containment: wind instruments are the knot through which the invisible force of
the wind merges with the artistic intervention.
Once on the vinyl, this sound stretches out with precision, in an articulate and detailed way, filling that emptiness which we call
“musical experience.” With its unpredictable and alien flow, the aeolian sound foregrounds the need to listen, but also its profound
inessentiality. The recordings of Matteo Nasini’s instruments produce at once a sense of lack and of completeness: the fullness of
the musical experience, the elusiveness of the symbolic/expressive element.
The images that make up the prints in The Sudden Gust likewise constitute a reflection on the invisible and incorporeal nature of
the aeolian experience. Geometric structures, inspired by the geometry of the instruments themselves and by a certain tradition
of musical scoring, intertwine with photos that, just like wind and sound, seem almost to disappear. More than ethereal, these
images are opaque. They are veils of themselves, and, just like the sounds, they stand as a sort of trace of repressed, universal
memory.
The sounds recorded in this edition are neither more nor less than discrete events in a potentially infinite flow: everything happens
even in the total absence of an informed interpretation. The listener is there, but he may as well not be. In a sense, the aeolian
sound is one that has no beginning and no end. It is significant because it is always other.
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/the-sudden-gust
Risonatori Eolici, 2009
mixed media
ambiental dimension
installation view
Museo della Bora, Trieste
Cocomerophono, 2015
glazed ceramics, wood, metal, nylon
80 x 40 x 40 cm
ABIAD, 2014
glazed ceramics, wood, metal, plastic,
nylon
70 x 40 x 20 cm
Untitled, 2010
wood, metal nylon
110 x 42 x 36 cm
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/home-recording
Ala, 2009
wood, metal, plexyglass, nylon
76 x 25 x105 cm
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/ala
ALEANDRO, 2013
Performance-Sleep concert with Davide stucchi
A Bed Is A Door, Villa Romana, Florence
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/aleandro-edit
2014
white clay and mat glaze on metal board
104 x 45 x 6 cm
Vita Vel Regula, Fluxia, Milan
Splash!, 2014
mixed glazis on white clay
Mold of the bottom of the river Brenta
30 x 20 x 10 cm
Fallings, 2015
glazed ceramics
40 x 30 x 4 cm
55 x 30 x 4 cm
Sogno della giungla, 2015
glazed ceramics
22 x 33 x 3 cm
Mediterranean Sonata, 2014
poster print, audio 10:24
installation view
L’A Project, Palermo
Text by Daniela Cotimbo
Born as an exchange between two artistic realities, related both in terms of generation and contents, andiamo là is a journey into
diversity, a psychic rediscovery of a landscape reached through the introjection of its elements. Such journey is enhanced by a
special filter, the words of Albert Camus, whose “meridian” thought arises precisely form the awareness of belonging to a world and
more specifically to a place whereby contemplation is offered already in response to every demand of comprehension. The idea of
giving to the philosophical thought a geographic collocation, today negotiated with an ever-increasing necessity to explore diversities, becomes a chance to reflect on the ways to internalize such experience, of which the landscape’s observation is one of the
crucial aspects. Matteo Maisini proposes instead an ambient sonorization derived from a study of the Mediterranean’s maps, by
identifying along its coasts, the notes on which Matteo’s composition is based on.
https://soundcloud.com/matteo-nasini/mediterranean-sonata
Untitled Flow, 2014
installation view
Nuova Gestione, Rome
digital platform, edition
Text by Saverio Verini
A monitor, connected to a computer with internet access day and night shows a facebook page that is constantly being updated. It
belongs to a “group”-. as they say in social media jargon - from the evasive name, formed by a likewise unclassifiable ensemble of
poets, artists, writers and photographers. It is them together with the creator of the project, Matteo Masini, who have put together
Untitled Flow, a platform that is literary and at the same time artistic and visual. Nasini’s contribution highlights his own formalisation
through the use of common elements, which could be considered almost banal such as a monitor (reminding us of the television
screens that were always turned on in the shop windows of electronic stores, typical of the Eighties) and a Facebook page (an interface that we’re all familiar with now). In the opening days of Nuova Gestione, camouflaged behind these elements, Untitled Flow
has become the place in which the contributions of the artists invited by Nasini converge: a mosaic of poems, drawings, short texts
and photographs that see in Casal Bertone . in its streets and its history . the main source of their inspiration. The “talking” shop
window becomes a sort of amplifier for the neighbourhood, astracting it (thanks to the artistic and poetic incursions of the artists,
for the most part a result of strolling through the streets of Casal Bertone approaching almost a form of situationist détournement)
and dematerialising it (through its diffusion on social media sites making it possible for the project to reach viral levels). Lacking
any attempt for retoric or to instruct, United Flow is a multi-faceted view that invites each passerby to take stock of what surrounds
them, a portrait that is fragmented, uncertain and simple, like the network through which the work crosses; an untitled flow - almost
a freestyle rap - that will find its own incarnation in a publication with the selection of the contributions posted, moving from the
virtuality of digital to the materiality of paper. In an attempt to tell, as Georges Perec wrote in 1975, “what you generally don’t notice,
what you don’t see, what isn’t important, what happens when nothing happens leaves only the passing of time, of people, of cars
and of the clouds”
http://www.matteonasini.com/work/untitled-flow/
Untitled Flow, 2014
edition
700 x 20 cm
detail
Bau Boom, 2013
audio, 6:12
installation view
Una vetrina, Rome
Text by Gianni Garrera
Music flourishes more when it imitates the sounds of a catastrophe, especially if it gives the frightening pleasure of shots and
blows. The acoustic expectation of an explosion is astonishing, due to the beauty lying in the roar’s phantom. The excess of
sound as well as shocking should also harm in order to be even more spectacular. Experiencing such a deafening sound it is
impossible to win the resistance to smile. The musical representation of destruction contains the same dizziness of a triumph.
We therefore understand how catastrophic is the assumption of any fest sound. In music however nothing can be so excessive to destroy everything with its excessiveness: it’s just playing a dynamiter game, just making Bau Boom. If someone listens
to fireworks for the love of exhibition, it’s not just cupidity of noise: it’s cupidity of pandemonium. It’s aspiring to the exorbitant
beauty of breaking through sky and earth, because the threat to destroy the world belongs to beauty.
LIne #3, 2015
wool yarn
ambiental dimension
installation view
Museo delle Palme, Orto Botanico di Palermo
LIne #3, 2015
wool yarn
ambiental dimension
installation view
Museo delle Palme, Orto Botanico di Palermo
Paesaggio Acre, 2015
wool yarn, wood
130 x 80 x 2 cm each
Paesaggio Acre, 2015
wool yarn, iron
205 x 180 x 2 cm
Untitled Pass Through, 2015
wool yarn
ambiental dimension
installation view
Clima Gallery, Milan
Untitled Pass Through, 2015
detail
Untitled Pass Through, 2015
detail
L’Anno Venturo Alla Città Di Cosa, 2014
mixed media
ambientail dimension
http://www.gasconade.it/L-anno-venturo-alla-citta-di-cosa
Gran Bazar Sciarada, 2015
mixed media
ambiental dimension
installation view
Festival Internazionale Di Installazioni Luminose, Rome