Mattia Peressini is a multidisciplinary Italian artist, interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj.

Mattia Peressini works and studies in Lignano Sabbiadoro and Mestre in Italy. His research focuses on providing visual interpretations of sensations, thoughts, and emotions, as well as his positions on different topics. The mystical and the inner self, as well as today and tomorrow worlds which intertwine, often by crushing or just touching us. Mattia looks for images of the interconnections between humans and these interpretations which there can be so much, a little, or nothing.

@el_perez_matt

What kind of education or training helped you develop your skillset?

It was undoubtedly essential to have a good knowledge of the artists and artistic techniques that have marked the history of art. To this, I add a ravenous relationship with the Contemporary, because I think that the comparison with artists and their artworks helps a lot to elaborate on one's own. As for the strictly practical aspect, I always tend to try any technique I visualize as appropriate for the project I have in mind. Persevering, it is likely that something good will come out.

For how long have you been in art? How did you start?

I have always had a passion for drawing and the desire to create stories, worlds, and dreams. When I started my master's degree course in visual arts, I received the stimulus I needed to free myself from the chains that we often force ourselves into, beginning to realize my ideas and projects more and more seriously. So we can say that I've been working on art projects for two years, very little.

What aspect of your work do you pay your most attention to?

To the concept, no doubt. By theory, I mean one or more reasoning proposed in various forms and visualizations. The artist does not give a specific answer but asks questions, and this is what I do through my art. I would like the users to take into consideration the problems and issues that my work raises, and to think about them, to confront them with friends, relatives, and especially themselves. The aesthetic value of the artwork, or only its appearance, is the result of a study of the best possible relationship between form (or non-form) and concept.

Your work "Fossil from the future I" short-circuits the temporal dimension of elements from the past. It also merges with an unknown future in a hypothetical timeline. Please tell us more.

"Fossil from the future I" in the maximum synthesis is time itself: an artifice that organizes what has already happened, what is happening, and what can happen. I speak of deceit because of the duration of an hour, a day, a year is established by man. Cultural imagination gives us that Fossil recognized as part of the past, but robot as something holds the future. The work lays bare the fragility of the human conception of time, creating a short circuit by merely condensing in a present time elements of a distant past with others of a distant future.

What we see is the wreck of an automaton, stuck in fossil resin, a high technology overwhelmed by primordial nature. If this find comes to us from a distant future just today, it is no coincidence: are we following a direction of developing more and more marked by technological saturation is this the right way? What will it lead to? Following recent events, it seems to me that the work is gaining even more strength.

What style of art would you classify your work in the near future?

I would say, Conceptual Art. As I explained before, the concept is the pivot of all my work, be it a painting, a sculpture, a video, or an installation. The paintings or drawings with which I intend to immortalize the visions I had during the practice of transcendental meditation are exceptions. They are not the result of research or reasoning to hide or externalize a concept that is purely irrational (but not impossible or improbable).

What was your most exciting/challenging project?

It is Connected, my last completed artwork that I exhibited at the final presentation of the Masterclass of the artist Alberto Garutti. This work is composed of an iPhone embedded in epoxy resin poured into a silicone rubber cast contained by a plaster counter cast. The sculpture is then fixed on a wooden base painted black. The sculpture is placed on a pedestal, possibly white, about 120 cm high, under a light source. Through its features of a fossil of our time, the work begins to signify. The smartphone represents our time, but not only as a distinctive object of an era but also as a handy device used continuously by the masses. But we do not spend our time on the object itself, but on the space, it triggers an artificial, fictitious reality, increasingly beautiful and increasingly influential on the actual one. The device that allows us in every moment to access this virtual reality is there in front of us, but it is not usable, access is denied us.

The work separates the signifier (smartphone) from its meaning (virtual reality); yet, it links to with each of them. The object (smartphone) is an integral part of the work in a physical sense so that initially interpreted as a fossil of our time, and as a physical signifier, or better still, a simulacrum, it is visually present. Virtual reality condenses with the work conceptually, not visually. They are plausible, interesting, attractive, but fake, deceptive. Moreover, virtual reality interacts and condenses the work through an input, coherently with its canonical functioning, this time conceptual: that of its splitting from its simulacrum.

Today, the world is facing the pandemic COVID-19. As Italian lockdown artist under Coronavirus quarantine, How do you keep doing your art from home?

The answer to this question, which I find very interesting, is multifaceted. It's challenging to find the material to produce something or to document yourself, and that's a significant limitation. However, this pandemic is a new source of inspiration. It gives more life to Connected, showing how illusory is in proximity. The virtual world that we "always keep in our pockets," maybe even more Fossil from the future I, shows us a scenario of a tiny virus (nature) that brings our civilization down. But there are so many aspects to work on, and I'm currently thinking about the concept of "subtraction," freedom, habits, routine, but also meaning, beliefs, identity... in short, we need to go much deeper!

Any shows, galleries, or publications where our readers can find your work?

Hanging on to the previous question, this is one of the damages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This month I was supposed to create my website with a computer designer, but the situation prevented it. I was also with other artists, concluding the organization of an exhibition that was supposed to take place this summer and which is now an unknown. If not through my portfolio, unfortunately, at the moment, some of my works can only be viewed through the Instagram platform.

Lastly, do you have a message to Al-Tiba9 readers?

Thank you all for your interest! If you would like to know more or have other interests in this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.