MARCO MASTROPIERI – IL QUARTO GIORNO
Dal 26 gennaio al 31 marzo 2023
Candy Snake Gallery
Candy Snake Gallery presents The fourth day, the first solo exhibition of Marco Mastropieri (born in Foggia in 1995, lives and works between Venice and Conegliano). The project combines a selection of recent works in which the landscape is the protagonist of a painting that combines the analytical study of plant species with the imaginative and narrative aspect that leads to the construction of a new reality. The title refers to the day dedicated to the creation of the plant world in the biblical story, bringing us back to a nature in the making and without human presence.
At the basis of Marco Mastropieri's research is the desire to build new and unexplored worlds through landscape painting.
Starting from a method of representation partially inspired by Flemish painting and some 16th century botanists, the visual and sensory stimuli coming from life or from other media are reconstructed through the pictorial sign, taking care to analyze down to the detail the various elements that make up the environment.
The behaviors and movements of plants, taken from scientific studies on plant neurobiology, are the protagonists of the narrative structure of the image. By accentuating everything through deformations and disproportions, the artist gives life to places with a surreal atmosphere.
Among the sources of inspiration, the 1976 book "La botany parallela" by Leo Lionni, a curious text in which a series of imaginary plant species is described with scientific meticulousness, and the works of Gherardo Cibo, a botanical artist who lived in the 16th century, author of one of the oldest herbaria, characterized by an evident alteration of the proportions between the plant in the foreground and the landscape in the background. Other important sources of inspiration from the literary world are the “Dune” saga of science fiction novels, especially the way in which the author, Frank P. Herbert, developed the planet on which the events take place, and the French novel “ The Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel”, whose atmospheres are reproduced within the paintings.
The concept of ecosystem is another foundation of Marco Mastropieri's research, which is developed by considering the connection of the different forms of life and the correspondences between macrocosm and microcosm.
Sometimes gloomy, other times adventurous, Marco Mastropieri's paintings present landscapes in which every possible human trace is absent, overturning the anthropocentric conception of nature.
In addition to Candy Snake Gallery, he has exhibited at Pal Project (Paris), Palazzo Monti (Brescia), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), Spazio Antares (Venice), Ca'pier (Venice).
