Text by CLOT Magazine
Matteo Zamagni is an Italian-born new media artist and director based in London. A while back, we featured his excellent Horror Vacui, a short film consisting of computer-aided, digitally reconstructed and real images of the natural and built environment.
This week Zamagni is launching his first solo exhibition at Anise Gallery in London, presenting a body of work that critiques materialistic practices. Crepuscolo, which will run from October 5 to 19, 2019, focuses on the role of human activity in re-purposing and removing Earth’s resources and, in doing so, disrupting world balance. Zamagni’s kaleidoscopic visions of unnatural worlds of excess in a state of instability bear the weight of impending ecological disasters.
Horror Vacui, originally commissioned by the ICA London and Channel 4 Random Acts, will be shown alongside a new series of prints and an exclusive video screening. Meaning ‘fear of empty space’, the film’s title refers to the art historical practice of filling the entirety of a surface or expanse with detail and the Buddhist concept of emptiness.
This practice — the materialisation of the human fear of nothingness and its irresolution — creates a tension which makes Zamagni’s works both intensive and immersive. This approach will be extended and presented in a new and daring installation for Anise Gallery’s second exhibition space in South East London.
