Gabriele Di Matteo

Gabriele Di Matteo was born in 1957 in Torre del Greco (IT), he lives and works in Milan (IT)

Gabriele Di Matteo reflects about the power and autonomy of the image and the persuasive force of art, still linked to the romantic myth. The utopian fascination resides in the attempt of reproducing it mechanically; the artist who repaints these canvases can only do so imperfectly, in full awareness of the impossibility of producing an identical copy.

 Following his painting studies at the Fine Arts School of Naples, in 1985 Gabriele Di Matteo exhibited his work in Evacuare Napoli, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, held at the Istituto Grenoble of Naples. The paintings he showed there echoed the language of the Neo-Expressionists but in an ironically theatrical key. As early as the following year, the artist operates a radical linguistic zeroing. As for 1+1=0, now part of the Museo Madre collection, the operated reset led Di Matteo to create works that triggered other mechanisms of reflection that were of a Conceptual nature. In 1989, with the opera Cassa Contanti, he won the Saatchi & Saatchi award. On this occasion, his alter ego Armando della Vittoria intervened for the first time. Later in 1992, under the identity of Armando della Vittoria, Di Matteo founded the magazine E il Topo. The first issue of this artist-run magazine was presented together with the artists Piero Gatto, Franco Silvestro and Vedova Mazzei, this same year in Milan at Viafarini.