Matteo Negri : Seventeen Sculptures in Color

Matteo Negri's one-person show on March 23rd. Negri is the Milanese artist who uses color as a fundamental element in the dialogue between space and form, and he turns surface and its reflective possibilities into an instrument of research. His works range from environmental installations made of special mirrors and theatrical lighting, to sculpture in which composite materials (epoxy resins, silicone) and steel are employed. This exhibit, curated by Pietro Gaglianò and Ivan Quaroni, is entitled 17 Colored Sculptures and it puts the emphasis on the work Negri has developed over time creating his own formal grammar and linguistic logic based on solid artisanal, technical and design experience. 
The artist has created two installations composed of 17 sculptures for the Lorenzelli Arte spaces, as the title of the exhibition states, installations in which space and volume are the protagonists, dialoguing with each other by way of color that creates connections through iridescent glass, steel and mirrors. Through sculpture that open and expand objects and flip planes topsy-turvy and its consequent perceptual disorientation, Negri defines the relationships, near and far, symbiotic yet antagonistic, between the environment and its observer. 
In the first room of the gallery there are 12 Kamigami – mutated Japanese word that defines the infiniteness and plurality of the spirit – are composed on a wall in an installation of round, iridescent, perforated surfaces, wholly covered in mirrored steel. A kind of ambiguous porthole that remain unique wall sculptures, reflecting infinite perspectives and flipping over space thus posing the question of its finiteness.  
The other ambiance's ability to disorient is determined by a large installation consisting of five elements: steel and glass of varying sizes dovetailed together that, polyhedral shapes the compose and discompose themselves, produce innumerable reflections thus rendering the pieces catalyzers of infinite points of view. 
Through these installed elements, almost “open gems” as Negri calls them, the viewer is called into question, as with contemplative lens, to determine his/her relationship to the works and reconstruct a rapport that ties him/her to that space. 
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Italian/English) published by Silvana Editoriale with texts by Pietro Gaglianò and Ivan Quaroni, with color reproductions of all the exhibited works and an anthological selection of previous works by the artist.