A lungo andare. Unmooring.

At the base of Matteo Montani's work, there is the search for identifying a powerfully expressive sign. Each of his pictorial cycles is made of signs that seem to spring out of the might of nature. There are several of these signs, and the artist accelerates their proliferation. According to Rainer Maria Rilke, we are surrounded by signs. For Montani, the sign is salvific, and through signs he builds a wall of details, focusing on the particular. But another aspect of his art emerges clearly: the performative quality of painting. In Italian art, the combination of painting and performance is not uncommon. Think of the ballerina dancing in front of a pink painting that features a music score in Da inventare sul posto, an extraordinary synthesis presented by Jannis Kounellis at Documenta in Kassel in 1972. Or take Mangiafuoco, with a fire-eater that spits flames on the pictured flames of Pier Paolo Calzolari's painting (1979).
For Matteo Montani, the performative aspect is linked to the process of making the artwork. The result is a painting that changes constantly and is increasingly pushed to the limit also due to the presence of metallic powders, emulsified powdered metals that Montani sometimes also mixes with gold.