A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again: A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again / Exhibition catalogue with critical reviews by Viana Conti, Milovan Farronato, arch. Carlo Berio, Gerardo Bonomo and an interview with Luca Fiore

A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again, the personal exhibition by Matteo Negri, has been extended until 9th June 2013, by ABC-ARTE Gallery, headed by Antonio Borghese, in Genoa. The title of the exhibition quotes the corrosive reportage by David Foster Wallace about the typology of the average American man's holidays in the Caribbean.

There is a strong playful component in the work by Matteo Negri (Milan 1982), which goes from sculpture, art installations and photography, together with an intense thinking of the human subject form childhood to the adult age. This work is completed by an eclectic selection of plastic substances, ceramics, bronze and resin.

The Danish game LEGO, recognized by its own small bricks, becomes the modular minimal element of his work, from which his research moves into space, shapes, chromatic relations, interactions with internal and external environments. This choice, almost a connecting archetype for the generations, with a strong, communicative and emotional power, has its own roots in the linguistic assonance between the LEGO brand and L'Ego (the Ego) as a psychic structure based on the relationship with reality and the other from himself.

LEGO works as a constructive and manipulating metaphor, as an icon of game and creation.

A reference for the Milanese artist is the relationship with the globe, starting from the interior world, not only at a psychic level, but at a genetic and molecular one.

His aesthetic choices refer in an iconographical way to the artists Piet Mondrian and Alighiero Boetti. He moves than to the key work which, subverting the scale and the shape of the nucleotide sequence, makes the DNA an authoritative and, in the same time, regenerating icon.

The exhibition, with site- specific works, was opened by a parallel, urban, en plein air itinerary in Genoa and it has been extended to the city texture with art installations in public spaces, like in Paris, London and Hong Kong.

At the Gallery entrance, the visitor was invited to confront himself with the impressive photo (Big Landscape) of a colourful group of shining mines on the green carpet of a billiard table: the announcement of a game with unexpected results.

In the same room there were three glossy deep mines, in glazed ceramic, the biggest magnificently blown (Ground Zero), in order to make the explosion a bright baroque scenario.

In the central hall, a spot - light pointed over a structure white as a ghost reproducing a double helix (The source code). It was made especially for ABC-ARTE and it dominated the surrounding space. A cloud of white balloons moved from the top of the installation, in a kind of score or self portrait describing the process of the cellular generation in the genetic code. The imposing nautical knot, made with the colours of the Saint George's flag and named Genoa Knot, was conceived as an homage to the sailing tradition of the town.

The exhibition room articulated by metal and various surfaces hosted four exemplars ofL'Ego Mondrian, a multicoloured composition on a chromed iron base, standing in front of the L'Ego Mappa, which is dedicated to the dead artist Alighiero Boetti. L'Ego Globeand ten maps of the continents, in various colors on a white LEGO background, in the last room: the vision of a coloured world, between a childish dream and the comedy of the global geo-politics.
The exhibition has been organized with the Patronage of the Municipality of Genoa and the Young Industrial Entrepreneurs of Genoa (Giovani imprenditori Confindustria Genova) togheter with the technical sponsorship of Siat, Papier Digital Communication, Montalbera Ruch, Garisenda Ricevimenti, Pitto-P.Zeta srl.
The catalogue exhibition, with critical reviews by Viana Conti, Milovan Farronato, arch. Carlo Berio, Gerardo Bonomo and an interview with Luca Fiore, includes also photos and analysis of the art installations around the city, which guided, from Largo Eros Lanfranco, through the window of the Banca Monte Paschi di Siena in Via Roma, to Piazza De Ferrari and the corner between Via XX Settembre and Via alla Porta degli Archi, till to ABC-ARTE Contemporary Gallery.