1/9unosunove is thrilled to present the new solo show by Mat Collishaw anticipating the major exhibition of the British artist at the Galleria Borghese in September. For this event, some of the historic halls of the Roman Museum will be holding a series of site specific interventions as a result of the close dialogue between the artist and Caravaggio's masterpieces of the Borghese collection.

For the exhibition at 1/9unosunove, Mat Collishaw has selected a group of artworks among three of his most widely known series: Burning Flowers, Insecticide and Last Meal on Death Row.

Mat Collishaw constructs charming scenes through photography which crystallize the eternal instant of transition from life to the end of this. In both the series of photographs exhibited in the gallery and produced for the new commissions at the Galleria Borghese, the artist triggers a process of stratification of meanings and multiple readings through a series of latently perceived references to the art of past centuries.

In Burning Flowers and Insecticide, the violence of the moment linked to the death is exalted by the beauty of the image itself recalling ‘the sublime’ of famous artistic representations of the martyrdom of christian saints according to a typical visual sensitivity of the Seventeenth Century art. Like the paintings of the Holy Martyrs by Guido Reni, these and many other works proposed by Collishaw seem to be tied to an aesthetic based on the collision/ encounter between the lust of the flesh and the brutality of the torture, an opposition similar to that of eros/ thanatos that creates in the viewer mixed feelings while giving the work a quasi mystical aura. Such a latent spirituality becomes manifest in Last Meal on Death Row in which the evocation of Christ's Last Supper before tackling the martyrdom of the cross is immediate.

The religious substratum across the works in the show must not be read through a Christian lens and intended in the framework of a future redemption. It is rather presented as an uncanny element in itself and innate to human existence.

According to a visual harmony in the two rooms of the gallery, bright colors of crushed butterflies and burning flowers dialogue with the dark shades of still-life depictions of the last meals of death row inmates in America, and a very dark black Caravaggio-like background becomes the common strong visual feature throughout the series of photographs. The intense beauty and the tragedy in the images are perfectly portrayed, drawing the viewer's gaze and forcing the mind to reflect, together with the artist, on the fragility of existence.

Mat Collishaw (Nottingham 1966) works and lives in London and is a key figure in the important generation of British artists who emerged from Goldsmith’s College in the late 1980s. He participated in Freeze (1988) and since his first solo exhibition in 1990 has exhibited widely internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include: Afterimage, Arter: space for art, Instanbul (2013); Pino Pascali Prize 2013, Fondation Pino Pascali, Bari (2013); Last Meal on Death Row, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, USA (2013); Magic Lantern, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2010) and Retrospectre at the British Film Institute, London (2010). Recent group exhibitions include GLASSTRESS: White Light/White Heat: Contemporary Artists & Glass, collateral Event of 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013) ; 720°, as part of Ron Arad’s Curtain Call Project, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (2012); (2012) Otherwordly – Optical Delusions and Small Realities, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2011); and the 12th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011).

Galleria 1/9unosunove

Via Degli Specchi, 20
Rome 00186 Italy
Ph. +39 06 97613696
gallery@unosunove.com
www.unosunove.com

Opening hours

Tuesday - Friday from 11am to 7pm
Saturday from 3pm to 7pm (or by appointement)

Related images

1, 2 & 3 Installation view, Mat Collishaw, 1/9unosunove, Photo: Valerio Iacobini, Courtesy 1/9unosunove”
4. Mat Collishaw, Insecticide 38, 2011, Courtesy The Artist, 1/9unosunove
5. Mat Collishaw, The poisoned page, 2013, Courtesy The Artist, 1/9unosunove
6. Mat Collishaw, Insecticide 39, 2014, Courtesy The Artist, 1/9unosunove