Matteo Mauro, Italian artist and founder of Matteo Mauro Studio, from Sicily. Photography © Jacopo Vassallo
1.Tell us what you do and your beginnings.
We study and create art. We like to think of ourselves as a studio that explore materials and art practices, mixing new technologies with traditional techniques.
I am an artist that rises from an architectural background, which led in to the world of art. My subsided interest for making architecture made possible the development of stronger senses towards the art world, as a blinded person would develop stronger sensibilities, unknown to the not-blinds.
2.What are your favorite museums in the world? Why?
In my teen years, in London, I found it very easy to interact with contemporary and modern art at the Tate Modern, an accessible walk-in artistic institution that offers an easy contact with new ideas and the past 100 years of art history.
As a child the main museums I visited were the Italians standards, where art history rules in its grandeur. As our art sensibility and practice grew stronger, our studio explored many great museums internationally. Discovering that sometimes the most valuable pearls, the ones which change one’s life, are found in forgotten places, and very often in unknown galleries or pop-up art scenes.
The question of our favourite museum is an hard one to answer, as collections evolve and buildings get refurbished. Also, our interests keep changing, and perhaps we are less sensitive to those museum enterprises, present anywhere in the world, which propose the same dozens of great and amazing masters.
These now have become visual products, which we know too well and are too accustomed with. Recently, the Butter Museum of Cork left us a deep impression, with a feeling of living inside a Joseph Beuys artwork.
3.How important are social networks in your business? And which platform do you prefer and why.
Social media has been a very powerful tool for us to establish our practice. It helped us to connect with a supporting audience, as well as with museums and galleries. Media tools are realms of mixed feelings and controversies, which we continuously ponder about.
However, we are glad that a simple tool, like Instagram for instance, is able to offer us a 2dimentional idea of what goes on around the world of art and more. We are also glad that the art world is not migrating towards other embarrassing platforms such us TikTok, as this dichotomy is making more space for, as Clapis would say, “Deep Scrolling” experiences.
4.What are your future projects?
We are currently relocating to a larger laboratory warehouse, which will allow us to work on bigger projects and more conceptual ideas. The studio is currently moving towards a production of sculptural pieces and installations.
5.To create greater engagement among museums, artists and professionals, do you have any advice for cultural projects such as #MuseumWeek?
The driver of the world right now is: engagement. The domain of engagement (and the public) is the key to open new doors and reach unexplored lands. Engagement can sometimes be a one-way system, in which the publisher uses the public to only increase its visibility. Or, a two-way system where the publisher uses its popularity to offer something back to its audience and share its platform with it; this is a receive-give circle.
I guess that finding ways to keep a high level of quality, which allows in the public actively participating, can be a very performative practice. This generates something that can create a pleasant and active community.
Interview by Fabio Pariante, journalist
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Matteo Mauro on social networks: Instagram − Facebook
Matteo Mauro (Catania, 1992) is a Sicilian artist. He graduated in Architecture from University College of London and his art is based on new and old methods of expression, analog and digital.
Mauro uses low-poly modeling and sculpting programs with “digital clay”, and then adds a generative process that is based on Java language codes: it is Generative Art.
Among his most important productions are the Micromegalic Inscriptions paintings (digital engravings), winners of some prizes, such as the International Van Gogh Prize given by José Van Roy Dalí, son of Salvador Dalí. Matteo Mauro lives and works in London.
