Matteo Fato

Il difficile è dimenticare ciò che si è visto per casa
(Ritratto di Pescara per caso)

 

Curated by Simone Ciglia

Produced and promoted by the Fondazione La Rocca, Pescara

 

Sixteen years after his last solo exhibition, Matteo Fato returns to exhibit in the city where he was born and still lives. It is precisely from the bond with the place that the exhibition takes shape, developing a reflection on the relationship between the artist and the territory. The exhibition is articulated in different sites in Pescara: from the spaces of the Fondazione La Rocca to some of the city’s main museums, touching on various exhibition and non-exhibition venues, until it crosses the public space through temporary interventions. Each venue proposes a reflection on an interweaving of themes – the natural and urban landscape, the history of Abruzzo and the history of art – to compose a personal portrait of the city.

The title – Il difficile è dimenticare ciò che si è visto per casa (The difficult thing is to forget what you have seen at home) – combines two quotations from the Pescara-born writer Ennio Flaiano, declaring the persistence of the images with which one grew up and by which one is habitually surrounded.

 

Next exhibition event

18 July

Convento Michetti, Francavilla al Mare (CH)

Among the fundamental references in Matteo Fato’s work, the artist Francesco Paolo Michetti is paid homage with a symbolic intervention inside the convent in Francavilla al Mare (CH), the house-studio that became the seat of a lively artistic coterie at the end of the 19th century.

 

Main locations

• Fondazione La Rocca

Sede principale della mostra, raccoglie un’antologia di opere inedite e realizzate in precedenza.

• Project Space – Fondazione La Rocca

Ex rimessa della cooperativa pescatori adiacente alla Fondazione La Rocca, ospita un archivio/Wunderkammer che raccoglie opere e reperti in un’installazione immersiva (fino al 3 agosto).

• Museo dell’Ottocento

Après works inspired by the museum’s collection and core of works devoted to classic genres of art history (landscape, portrait, still life)

• Museo delle Genti d’Abruzzo

Intervention within the museum itinerary, in dialogue with Abruzzo’s history and material culture.

Special Projects

• Public postings

Artist posters in public spaces of the city (June 9-July 6).

• Traveling sound vehicle

Release of the song Ha tutte le carte in regola by Piero Ciampi, recorded by Fato and Ciglia. Also produced on vinyl.

• Canal Port*

Installation of a Maiella stone easel facing the sea, a tribute to painting and Franco Summa.

• Riverfront

Intervention on the sails of a paranza sailing along the Pescara River.

•Casa Flaiano

Neon sign on the facade of Ennio Flaiano’s birth house.

• Redazione rivista Segno

Opening of the editorial office of Segno magazine to the public with an exhibit dedicated to the history of the magazine.

• Edicola via L’Aquila

Limited edition poster dedicated to gallery owner Cesare Manzo, the first to represent the artist, as a gift to the public.

• Selected tobacconists and newsstands

D’après invito-cartolina by Gino De Dominicis for the exhibition Quando non si parla più di immortalità del corpo (ingresso riservata agli animali) (De Domizio Gallery, Pescara, 1975).

 

 

Public Program

Guided tours, meetings, lectures and dialogues with critics and curators.

 

Catalogo

Catalog published by Allemandi, published at the conclusion of the project.

 

Matteo Fato is represented by Monitor Gallery (Rome, Pereto, Lisbon).

 

*We are sorry to inform you that Specchio Angelico, Matteo Fato’s installation of the sea-facing easel located at the Canal Harbour, part of the current diffuse exhibition is currently not open for viewing as it has been damaged by improper intervention.
We will provide updates as soon as possible regarding its possible reactivation.

 

 

 

PAST EVENT

 

• s.l.m. 00 – Zero zero sul livello del mare  (June 29)

Series of works marked by the flooding of the artist’s studio in 2019

 

 

• Spazio Matta  (June 29)

Conference by Gianni Garrera – Non pitturare invano 

The musical philologist speaks in a lecture that begins with an analysis of Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece and Leopardi’s The Infinite, investigates the history of the dissolution of form in modern art, the conflict between creation and destruction, ecstasy over chaos and intelligence over enigma. It recounts the detachment from imitation and the renunciation of Painting’s attention to Nature for the custody of the world. What is not represented fades: Nature asks Painting not to be forgotten.