Matèria is pleased to open Figlio di gazza, Giuseppe De Mattia’s (Bari 1980) third solo show at the gallery, curated by Vasco Forconi.The exhibition features a series of site-specific works that reflect De Mattia’s recent artistic practice, as he returns to investigate the phenomenology of the artist’s profession through the use of the magpie as a narrative device, inspiring the exhibition title.

 While animal symbolism has appeared multiple times in his work, taking on different roles, De Mattia now undergoes a true process of identification with the (thieving) magpie. Throughout the exhibition, the magpie progressively assumes the roles of a spirit animal, interlocutor, and alter ego of the artist.

 Following her instinct, the magpie steals and accumulates precious objects, then guards them in her nest, transforming it into an unintentional wunderkammer. This action, similar and specular to what artists do within their studios, is a metaphorical act of theft and accumulation, eventually resulting in the transformation of the loot into artworks. This uncontrollable impulse for theft and serial accumulation becomes an opportunity for De Mattia to reflect, with the irony that has always characterized his poetics, on both the methodologies and the structural conditions of the artist’s profession.

 The exhibition presents itself as a sensory translation of this ongoing process of research, accumulation, and transformation, of both objects and ideas; it’s a material and metaphorical act of labor, essential for the artist’s daily survival, in which different styles and languages are mixed, not devoid of a certain conscious anachronism.

 Figlio di gazza is a body of work dedicated to the analysis of theft, citation, and appropriation in artistic practice. Giuseppe De Mattia engages in a dialogue with the magpie, which leads him to an awareness and assimilation of the clever and furtive method with which the animal, and therefore the artist himself, observe the world.

 An imaginary magpie hides in the gallery space, nests among the branches, sowing traces behind small wooden, tin, and cardboard boxes while letting herself be observed. Following these clues, the audience finally encounters the magpie and is invited to approach a large-scale installation: a room in which one can peek onto from small holes in the wall. Here, you can observe a series of bas-relief votive icons bearing the image of precious objects discovered by De Mattia over the years, collected, accumulated, and then resold; a process that has allowed him to find financial support in the early years of his career. Accompanying the audience is the voice of the magpie, that with an almost fairytale tone, recounts her attraction to all that shines, her thieving nature, in an imaginary dialogue with the artist that results in a reflection on the concept of value, originality and reproduction; culminating in the serene acceptance of the artist as a thief.

 Dialect, popular culture, love for craftsmanship and collecting, the revelation of the tricks of the trade are some of the different elements that contribute to the creation of a deeply autobiographical narrative. However, as Vasco Forconi writes in the text accompanying the exhibition, “this narrative is subtly revealed to be broader and generational, another chapter in the ongoing tragicomic saga of a mid-career artist.”