MATHIAS MALLING MORTESEN  BLUE

22 April - 22 June 2023 Galleria SARP 

SARP is pleased to present Mathias Malling Mortensen's second exhibition in Sicily. After the success of the artist residency program in Sicily at Palazzo Previtera in 2021, Mathias Malling Mortensen reinterprets the color blue: in its purity and in its nuances, in the variations of intensity that determine the very structure of his signature works: paper-cuttings. When observing these works, we notice the use of paper and in particular, the full gesture of the hand’s sign, a sign that is expressed both in the geometric figures and in the relationship between line and surface.SARP is pleased to present Mathias Malling Mortensen's second exhibition in Sicily. After the success of the artist residency program in Sicily at Palazzo Previtera in 2021, Mathias Malling Mortensen reinterprets the color blue: in its purity and in its nuances, in the variations of intensity that determine the very structure of his signature works: paper-cuttings. When observing these works, we notice the use of paper and in particular, the full gesture of the hand’s sign, a sign that is expressed both in the geometric figures and in the relationship between line and surface. Georges Salles claimed that the art of painting is above all an art of thinking. In the works by M.M.M. each geometric figure, like monads, is connected to each other by a series of connections, of ramifications that link each paper cutting to a wider network of abstracted figures. These paper cuttings denote a presence of relationships, of emotional exchanges that the individual weaves with the environment at the level of object and subject relationship. The geometric figures are mutually united by a network of exchanges, by a force and energy of vitality which keeps them in relationship and supports them. An empathy crosses the figures between them, a psychic network of fragmented images and signs. The works presented for this exhibition are bodies that embody a set of singular events, and the relationship activity is expressed above all in seeing and taking care of the world, supporting the web of connections so that no one is left alone. The immaterial matter of this project finds its expression in the spatio-temporal concreteness of the concept of a body, possible and singular perspectives, body interpreted as a life path that leads from the possible to the real in a process of identification and explication of fragments. The network of paper cuttings is marked by an edge which determines the boundary and traces a demarcation line between the external world
and the internal world, between the visible and the invisible matter. This edge has a precise symbolic and allegorical meaning, it also has the purpose of delimiting an area that you want to be perceived with a privileged attention compared to the space in which each cutting interacts with the direct perception of the observer.
On the use of colour, the artist is inspired by the intense colors of the Mediterranean Sea and the beauty of the seabed of Sicily, as well as how the colour of blue is often incorporated in the art of Sicily and its history. The artist works with the color as the figure of the essence of form, a thought and a reflection on existence, on man in his being and being in the world and his openness to the world which assumes the modes of the emotional situation, of "understanding", from which "taking care of things" arises. The color blue, the color of thought and reflection, has the task of establishing a relationship of contamination between the structure and the geometric figures, according to a correspondence that is not direct, but the correspondence is indirect between levels, i.e. between different planes in which the color blue, symbolically the color of silence circumscribes
the threshold from which to open up to the world.
To conclude, the universe of M.M.M. is an endless sea created by the drops made up of the vicissitudes of each particle of the physical and organic world which remain connected to each other in a network and fluctuate in the world of life, living moment by moment.