"Rough Beauty" Installation Documentation > Exhibition Documentation - MAT/tam4 Mantova

Palazzo Costa – via Grioli 46
Mantova

My process starts with walking, searching and experiencing – on city streets, gardens, beaches, and countryside. Interiors and exteriors. I find such things as berries drying on their stems, fading flowers, a flattened magnolia pod, wooden fragments, worn fabrics and used balloons. What appeals to me in these objects is that the world has used them -- they are discarded, disintegrating, discovered and then –- re-purposed. This creates our unpredictable dialogue.

The desire to interact with these objects brings me to painting as I try to reach for their essence with my essence. The gesture corporal. I use tube watercolor and aqua oil from the makers Fragonard and Van Gogh. No color is used directly from the tube. I mix instinctively using 3 or 4 pigments to achieve the desired shade – with an abundance of water.
I juxtapose background shapes and color fields with foreground details. The works can incorporate multiple combinations of text, shape and painted fragment, as well as the single botanic specimen as icon. Some works are directly inspired by obscure details found in Renaissance paintings. I also explore shapes utilizing the white conté crayon as a drawing tool -- with an overlay of both bright and muted watercolor washes and at times with the added texture of my fingertips pressed into the wet color. The resist of the crayon gives an impression of a woodcut.

I utilize the drip as both punctuation and mentor -- which also can be seen as gravity’s participation. I am inspired by the works of painters Cy Twombly, Luc Tuymans and Bronzino.

MAT / tam 4
Manto Arte Temporanea
Temporary Art Mantova

Annarosa Buttarelli and Lucio Pozzi display art every so often, suddenly, for brief moments and in varied sites, even art spaces.

These are exhibitions or events, things done by people we come to know, whom we ask to do something: friends, family, acquaintances, ourselves and especially many others. They are things to see, but then it also happens that there is stuff to read or listen to or touch or taste or smell.

Mantova is not only an ideal center for reticent yet public action but it is also a mental place that may sprout elsewhere. It all starts from Mantova, but then MAT / tam may happen anywhere: Lodz, Ulan Bator, Bamako, Paris, Asuncion, even Mantova.

Our events take place when they occur. They are announced by word of mouth or by email. Normally they last a couple of hours or a bit less. Rather than being linked to a program, the sense of this endeavor generates its meaning while it happens.

(Manto is the mythical priestess founder of Mantova)