.
Mattia Biagi – Black Tar
Officine dell’Immagine, a newborn art space in Milan, opens with the solo show by Mattia Biagi (b. 1974), an Italian artist, who has been living in Los Angeles for the past decade.
For the first time, Mattia Biagi comes back to Milan, the place where he emarked upon his artistic path with the designer Giulio Cappellini, who helps him – together with his wife – to increase his passion for art, fashion, design and architecture.
Visiting that area, Biagi started to use tar as his main medium of expression. The carefully selected objects, covered by black moulded tar, lose their original function and gain a new social value. Biagi, dipping the objects, is able to preserve their shape and recall feelings and events chosen from his private life, crystallising them. In his work, the artist tackles different issues: he gets back to Christian religion, like in Heaven and Hell or Confession; and tells about his memory – from the childhood till the life in USA, as in Den of iniquity and American grinder. Weapons, musical instruments and all the objects selected by Biagi, after the “Rite of Tar”, cease to be what they were made for and transform themselves into symbols, which have the power to recover memories, feelings and thoughts.
The exhibition, “Black Tar”, at Officine dell’Immagine, Via Vannucci, 13 in Milan, will run until March 7.
Monica Lombardi – Images courtesy Mattia Biagi
